Clay Shirky: How cognitive surplus will change the world – Clay Shirky (2010)

I’m not a huge fan of Clay Shirky. His writing and speeches are always interesting, but I think a lot of what he has to say is restating the obvious. On the other hand, perhaps I’m undervaluing the value of the obvious, because many times he brings to light things that I haven’t yet given much thought to.

Reposting this video mainly because of his idea of cognitive surplus: the world gets one trillion hours a year of human leisure time, and some of it is spent on creative endeavors like the ones he highlights. Which raises an interesting question (to me, anyway): why do I blog? Why do I feel like I’m being lazy when I don’t blog? I’ve always chalked it up to just ego-stroking over my own self-satisfaction about the value of my opinions—but Shirky says something else is going on, with me and with everyone else who does it.