This past weekend, I attended my second TLT Symposium. The keynote was Clay Shirky. He was very well received.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyaTuG7oVcI?rel=0&w=480&h=390]
One of the reasons he impressed me was how well constructed his presentation was. He’s obviously been thinking about these topics for a long time in a lot of detail.
I did a tweet search from the event and you can find the start of the keynote at: http://bit.ly/gkbW2X
I really wish I took notes at the beginning of his presentation. He mentioned three dynamics that are having an effect in social media today.
He began talking about the individual vs. group I believe. He used the example of Ryerson College vs. a student, Chris Avenir who used Facebook to create a study group (http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/309855). It was an example of how antiquated, traditional, institutional oxymorons collide. In the past institutions could broadcast one message, but institute a different code of conduct within their walls. From Ryerson’s perspective, Avenir was using Facebook to cheat. From Avenir’s perspective, they were use Facebook as a virtual study hall. Clay lamented that the settlement was undisclosed. However he was interested in something that wasn’t argued or addressed by the university: given that there were 146 members of this virtual study group, how could anyone regulate the participation? Clay used this as a segue into his next point:
Participation drops off in a power scale and is more dramatic in large groups. He used the Pluto page in Wikipedia as an example (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pluto&action=history). There are over 2,500 contributors to that page, but a disproportionate amount of those edits were made by a relative few and one in particular. Clay said this pattern appears with any example of group participation. The only pedagogical solution was to use small groups for those types of activities.
Clay then warned that our institutions do not reflect the reality of the greater world that we are a part of. He used the Library of Congress to make his point. We are segmenting our knowledge based on the size of a book shelf. Looking at the “D’s” for example (http://www.loc.gov/aba/cataloging/classification/lcco/lcco_d.pdf), we see some familar countries at the top of the list, but then it lumps Asia and Africa into the same heirarchtical level as the “Romanies” and “Great Britain.”
He concluded with a final example of all three dynamics at play. I have to admit that I kind of lost Clay here. He talked about a mathematical proof N=NP or N≠NP or something like that. The point of his example was that modern publishers didn’t want to couldn’t accept research that had an undefined pool of authors. There were other points he made, but it was an interesting look at how social media is changing and how if our institutions don’t change as well, we’ll be left behind and literally become extinct.
I’ve been reading his latest book: Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (2010) and he talks about how the sitcom has supplanted our free time with enormous amounts of consumption. He claims that the US watches 200 billion hours of TV a year. By comparison, all of wikipedia has taken 100 million hours to develop-that’s equal to how many commercials we watch on TV in a single weekend!
Clay observes that people are social and want to share. TV has displaced the balance between consuming, creating and sharing. The internet and social media has changed the options people have and they are exercising that potential in very new ways.
Going back to the keynote, Clay mentioned a few other interesting points that I don’t really know how to weave into a recollection of his presentation, but even on their own, they are very interesting to think about.
Serious people do silly things and silly people do serious things. His examples were that for every wikipedia, there are a thousand lolcats. People have been using technology to do all sorts of benign and silly things. So much so, that we all ask “who has time to do that?” about almost anything we don’t understand or relate to. Clay used the example of gnarlykitty, a freelance lifestyle writer. She is known for her act of journalism around the relatively recent coup in Thailand. She has an interesting blog post reflecting back on some of her own work (http://gnarlykitty.org/?s=coup). This was an example that we are interacting in ways that traditional media outlets won’t and can’t function. This was an example of what is happening and will continue to grow.
People have to make things happen with the technology we have to support our social values. This kind of goes back to the people will do silly things comment earlier. Clay pointed out that once we had the printing press, people began to publish erotica. It took something like 150 years before the first scientific journal was published. We have to work in a concerted effort to use these tools to support our values.
In the question and answer period, Clay closed with a statement that we should try lots of smaller ideas and avoid the dogma of developing that one big perfect plan or vision. His point was that projects like wikipedia and linux began with very modest calls of action. We never know where the next big idea will come from, but people like Clay are helping us to understand how to best cultivate that potential.
As you can imagine, I’m still just processing the raw data. I’m not sure what all of this means for me, my team, my unit, my organization, my school. But, I kinda don’t have to worry about all of that. The best thing to do is to tear off a small piece, try it out, chuck it if it doesn’t stick and run with anything that looks good.
One of the initial things I’m thinking about is the relationship between cognitive surplus and work. Most of Clay’s examples were extra-curricular. They weren’t related to the workplace. Our bosses can’t make us use our free time to think about work. That statement doesn’t even make sense from Clay’s perspective (not that I can speak for him). Some questions I had about this are:
- How do these ideas impact developing our workforce?
- What do I do in my free time that has a greater impact? How am I spending my free time? I have an idea, but how skewed is it based on my subjectiveness and sheer ability to recall. Keep in mind that my daughter just turned one-year old and I still don’t feel like I’m getting enough sleep. David Norloff was the first to warn me that won’t change much as she grows older 🙂
- How can we foster a culture that
acknowledgesencourages our innate urges to share and socialize? What kinds of other tensions do these ideas draw out between workplace paradigms? - Who would be eligible for contributing to the cognitive surplus? Better stated, how can we, as a country, better use and develop our cognitive surplus? Frankly, I look around the world and see a lot of things that would lead me to believe there’s a cognitive deficit, but I know that Clay isn’t making a value statement as much as drawing our attention to a latent potential that is shaking up the norm and will likely be a growing trend and that it’s really up to us.
I’m sure there are many more questions I want to explore. I’ll have to add them as I go along.
I have an interesting opportunity coming up with a new online Italian series of courses. I think we might be able to use many of these ideas in how we approach things.
How can you best use your cognitive surplus?
Ravi has also blogged about the topic.