The author of the breakout hit Here Comes Everybody reveals how new technology is changing us from consumers to collaborators, unleashing...
read full description
reviews
Jul 01, 2011
Fred
rated it: 
The Guardian published early June 2011 the list with the 100 greatest non-fiction books. Clay Shirky’s Here comes everybody was included in the politics section. Clay Shirky released his book Cognitive surplus with as subtitle “How technology makes Consumers into Collaborators“. Having read his first one (and still being impressed) I decided to read his Cognitive Surpluss.
Clay Shirky teaches at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University, where he researches th More...
Clay Shirky teaches at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University, where he researches th More...
0 comments
like
(3 people liked it)
Feb 20, 2011
Luca
rated it:
Surplus cognitivo è un libro che dovrebbe leggere chiunque si interessamente, professionalmente o per diletto, di social media e social network. Clay Shirky, con una prosa molto leggera e coinvolgente, ci guida in quello che potrebbe essere l’immediato futuro. Un mondo in cui un piccolo spostamento di attenzione globale dai media passivi ad Internet potrebbe generare cambiamenti sociali impensabili.
Il libro è ricco di casi, alcuni già racontati sul suo blog (come il fatto che riprender More...
Il libro è ricco di casi, alcuni già racontati sul suo blog (come il fatto che riprender More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Feb 20, 2011
Emanuela
rated it:
Questo libro si presenta nella quarta di copertina,ammesso che un ebook ne abbia una, con oggetto il tempo libero. Tale definizione mi trova parzialmente in disaccordo perchè, e lo stesso autore ce lo rammenta, il concetto di libertà come opportunità individuale è in antitesi con quello di rete sociale, sia sul web sia nella realtà fisica. Il tempo libero, visto quale frazione temporale che rimane dalle incombenze professionali e lavorative assume, per coloro che frequentano social network e com
More...
Aug 09, 2011
This latest book from Clay Shirky, author of Her Comes Everybody, is focused on the suplus of cognitive capabilities we now have at our disposal and how our ability to connect creates an opportunity to use that surplus in ways we've never imagined to do good.
We've created more "free" time for ourselves than ever before and it is fascinating to think about what we can accomplish together if we choose to do something good with that time. As opposed to sitting on our duffs in passive acti More...
We've created more "free" time for ourselves than ever before and it is fascinating to think about what we can accomplish together if we choose to do something good with that time. As opposed to sitting on our duffs in passive acti More...
Jan 16, 2012
Kira
rated it: 
One of the biggest lessons from Shirky’s book is the mistake it is to assume that the way we’ve always done things is the way we always should, or the way things are “supposed to be.” I work in publishing, so this theme really resonated with me, but this blog itself is an example of the kind of change Shirky is talking about. Not even two decades ago, I’d have struggled to find any forum for sharing personal book reviews, let alone an audience for them. After all, I don’t work at the Times; no o
More...
May 22, 2011
David
rated it:
It used to be that television was the primary way most people burned off their free time. However, if you bought a television you were strictly a consumer; you couldn't control the content of what you watched which was produced by a select few; you could only change the channel or turn it off. However now many people spend much of their free time in front of computers, and if you purchase one of those you are not only a consumer but you are also a producer. Many people now spend their time cr
More...
Jan 31, 2011
Ben
rated it:
Shirky helps us make sense of the new resource available to society: cognitive surplus, or the combination of free time with easy production, sharing and collaboration. He draws on everything from the Gin Craze of 1720s London to Grobanites for Charity to illustrate the patterns he describes. While I found it hard to follow some of the ways he structures his thoughts, he is an engaging writer and clear thinker, very well positioned to observe emerging trends and behaviors that new technological
More...
Jan 12, 2011
Andrea
rated it:
I had been wanting to read this since hearing Clay Shirky tell his anecdote about the TV producer who asks him how people can "find the time" to write Wikipedia articles. (His answer: People who work in TV don't get to ask that question.) As usual with Shirky, I am in awe of his ability to generally and elegantly account for why social media have been taken up on a large scale: technological means + age-old human motivations + opportunities created by early experimenters = media revolu
More...
Dec 18, 2010
Suzanne
rated it: 
I found this a fascinating read. He talks about how now, with the combination of surplus time in society (all time that has previously been spent in watching television) plus new opportunities to share and create online (think Wikipedia, Apache, online charities, couchsurfing.org, meet up.com, pickupal etc.) that there are now amazing ways to use our cognitive surplus for public/civic good. Obviously he's talking to readers on the other side of the digital divide, employed people with surplus ti
More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Sep 13, 2010
JD
rated it:
Clay Shirky is a master at bringing meaning to the startling cultural and technological changes whirling through our lives. In Here Comes Everybody, Shirky provided context the revolution that is turning passive office workers into take-charge designers of their businesses’ corporate destinies. In his follow-up, Cognitive Surplus, he probes a bit deeper into what is propelling forward our individual creativity and the impulse to share and contribute to a collec
More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Aug 13, 2010
Karen
rated it:
Shirky picks up where he left off from "Here Comes Everybody," describing in finer grain the behaviours underlying the results of specific collective actions that have been powered by social media. His writing reads like a field guide for makers in the space, highlighting potential potholes in thinking, making it invaluable reading for those wondering how the opportunity presented by social media can be channeled towards civic action and innovation.
It's very interesting to More...
It's very interesting to More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Jul 29, 2010
Book
rated it:
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
To view it, click here
Jul 04, 2010
Tony
rated it:
Shirky suggests that we got a huge burst in unallocated free time with the suburbanization that followed WWII but that it was mostly sucked up by television--the whole country watching Gilligan's Island, etc. We have moved now to where we can expect and utilize interactive social media instead. Citing a 4-year-old toddler poking behind the TV, not looking for the people on the screen, but for the mouse, Shirky notes that even a toddler knows there's something wrong with a screen that has no inte
More...
Nov 28, 2011
Richard
rated it:
Very interesting. And exciting.
When the forty-hour workweek became the norm, people suddenly had a huge collective pool of time that had to be put to other uses. As thing turned out, in Shirky's thesis, the vast majority of that time was siphoned off by television, and, basically, went to waste.
Humans have an innate drive toward sociability, competence, generosity and creativity. But the one way street of television — we produce, you consume — and the physical isolation More...
When the forty-hour workweek became the norm, people suddenly had a huge collective pool of time that had to be put to other uses. As thing turned out, in Shirky's thesis, the vast majority of that time was siphoned off by television, and, basically, went to waste.
Humans have an innate drive toward sociability, competence, generosity and creativity. But the one way street of television — we produce, you consume — and the physical isolation More...
Jun 11, 2011
Andreas
rated it:
There seems to be a pattern with me and books by Clay Shirky. I see the talk, like the basic idea and leave it at that, only to return a few months later to actually read the book and find much of value there. This was true for “Here Comes Everybody” and it’s also true this time around for “Cognitive Surplus”. Let’s see if the pattern holds in the future.
In “Cognitive Surplus” Shirky argues that during the second half of last century the majority of people in the West suddenly found More...
In “Cognitive Surplus” Shirky argues that during the second half of last century the majority of people in the West suddenly found More...
Sep 12, 2010
Ninakix
rated it:
I loved Shirky's first book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, and given Shirky's reputation, I had high expectations for the second. That said, I was occasionally a little bit disappointed: I wanted something that delved a little deeper into the machinations and psychology of these communal groups, but I instead felt like much of this book focused on "Look, we can now communicate online," and offered a repository of Shirky's stories of online communi
More...
Oct 04, 2011
Joe
rated it:
While I preferred "Here Comes Everybody", this book was interesting as well. It's basically an examination of how people use online tools to change the world. The book tends to feel Polyannaish and I don't think Shirky went nearly deep enough in his examination on how tools like Facebook and Twitter can be used for evil. I also think that LOLCats is a rather trivial example of group collaboration(Shirky admits this), so why bother with it at all. I'd liked to have seen discussion of 4c
More...
Nov 01, 2010
Jack
rated it:
This is a quick and easy read full of counter-intuitive rethinking. He begins with the simple and undeniable premise that we have a lot more free time then our great-grandparents did. And, until we recently, we poured almost all that free time into TV, in part because there was not much else to do with it. But now, Shirky argues, the web makes it so darn easy to share your own production, that an entirely new approach to being with other people has evolved.
He does a few very cool More...
He does a few very cool More...
May 01, 2011
Debbie (Readerbuzz)
rated it:
We live in amazing times. For the majority of those of us who live in America, we have vast reservoirs of free time.
But how do we choose to use that free time? Sadly, for the last fifty years, we have spent most of it passively watching television, watching television to the exclusion of other more social, more fulfilling activities. Last year, in fact, Americans watched about two hundred billion hours of television. And, even more sadly, studies show that those who watc More...
But how do we choose to use that free time? Sadly, for the last fifty years, we have spent most of it passively watching television, watching television to the exclusion of other more social, more fulfilling activities. Last year, in fact, Americans watched about two hundred billion hours of television. And, even more sadly, studies show that those who watc More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
May 30, 2010
Natali
rated it:
I liked this book less than Here Comes Everybody but mostly because I don't think Shirky needed to write another ethnography. His last book was such a complete anthropological snapshot of how we share and collaborate with the technology available to us. This book is an extension of that and, while interesting, I was hoping that he might assert a hypothesis about what we will do with this collaboration. He really doesn't.
Shirky makes the point that we use our spare time to collaborat More...
Shirky makes the point that we use our spare time to collaborat More...
3 comments
like
(4 people liked it)
Jun 09, 2010
Clayton
rated it:
While I enjoyed the thesis of this book -- humans now have enormous amounts of free time from which creativity, globally collaborative projects, and a few more Wikipedias could burst forth -- I feel like I read this text last year when it was written by Daniel Pink and called "Drive." I'm not joking when I say that Clay Shirky's newest book seems like a thinner version of 'Drive' which is a fascinating look at what motivates us as a species. Pink argues that humans are driven by a cre
More...
Aug 26, 2010
Jamie
rated it:
Shirky's last book was a must read in my opinion, this one still has some strong moments but is not as cohesive as a whole. One of the biggest problems is that he lost me by referring constantly to TeeVee as not a social medium.
As someone who made their first online friends on the 90210 message boards, who knows the importance of reading the Bravo blogs and TWOP and Project RunGay, I think television is an incredibly social medium. Let me put it this way, if I never talked to anyone More...
As someone who made their first online friends on the 90210 message boards, who knows the importance of reading the Bravo blogs and TWOP and Project RunGay, I think television is an incredibly social medium. Let me put it this way, if I never talked to anyone More...
Mar 06, 2011
Josh
rated it:
To be sure, I like Clay Shirky's writing and his conversational tone and approach is a significant aid in conveying philosophical truth. This examination of the drive of societies to mentally numb themselves and the new technologies that are converting this tendency into productive activity is both insightful and complete. Though the numerous examples throughout the book are well documented, they are discussed cogently and succinctly by Shirky. My principal, if only, complaint with regards to th
More...
Sep 28, 2010
Jaycruz
rated it:
Cognitive Surplus is written by the author Clay Shirky. He is also a teacher at New York University, where he teaches “New Media” at the Interactive Telecommunications Program. His previous book is called Here Comes Everybody where he tackled the subject of the power of the web for groups to organize. Shirky has also written for publications like The New York Times and Wired.
My first exposure to Clay Shirky was a talk he gave about the so called problem of information overload. In th More...
My first exposure to Clay Shirky was a talk he gave about the so called problem of information overload. In th More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Sep 15, 2011
Dan
rated it:
Shirky describes the economic changes swirling around us as people have disposable free time and an unprecedented ability to create, combining to form a massive potential. Wikipedia is a drop in the bucket compared to what could be done if people reduced the time they watch TV and instead spend it on a massively collaborative project (akin to but different than Wikipedia).[return][return]It is informative and pushes you to think about our economy and how media is evolving into something more th
More...
Sep 06, 2010
Brett
rated it:
In his new book, Cognitive Surplus, Clay Shirky covers some of the same ground as several other authors I've read this year. But even though some of the starting material may be the same - such as the Israeli day care story - Shirky tells a very different story, with a very different moral and outcome than those other books. (In case you're wondering, the two that come immediately to mind are Dan Pink's Drive and Seth Godin's Linchpin.)
The upshot of the book is that in the last half More...
The upshot of the book is that in the last half More...
Aug 15, 2010
Cherie
rated it:
I'm only on page 9, but already very hooked. Shirky's previous book, Here Comes Everybody, talked about the power of the internet to connect people. He continues and expands on that theme in this book.....
I just finished this book yesterday: I read chunks of the last chapter out loud to Mike as we drove to Marshalltown. I have been reading it for several weeks, in between working on handouts for fall and finishing up other books. It is not a quick read: it is packed with information, More...
I just finished this book yesterday: I read chunks of the last chapter out loud to Mike as we drove to Marshalltown. I have been reading it for several weeks, in between working on handouts for fall and finishing up other books. It is not a quick read: it is packed with information, More...
Nov 10, 2010
Bvarnum
rated it:
This "sequel" to "Here Comes Everybody" has a clearer and more hopeful message that basically goes:
If we take the equation:
means + motive + opportunity = action
And we solve it for motive by plugging "internet tools" into means, "leisure time" into opportunity, and the various groups into "action," we learn that people have pretty powerful positive motives.
That's the structure of this book, but Shirky's do More...
If we take the equation:
means + motive + opportunity = action
And we solve it for motive by plugging "internet tools" into means, "leisure time" into opportunity, and the various groups into "action," we learn that people have pretty powerful positive motives.
That's the structure of this book, but Shirky's do More...
Nov 10, 2010
Audra
rated it:
Before we had access to the Internet and the many social media applications so many of us use today, we spent quite a bit of our free time in the solitary and consumptive activity of watching TV. Now we may still be watching TV with some of our free time, but it is no longer a completely passive activity. People are participating in discussions online as they watch as well as using content to create new things to share with our online world. We have become participators, collaborators and prod
More...
Jul 13, 2010
Dave
rated it:
This book picks up right where Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations left off, both in content and in awesomeness.
I would say this is right up there for one of the best books I've read this year.
A few of the ideas that resonated with me:
- Many of the things we take for granted as a culture are merely 'accidents of history'. That large corporations have traditionally been the best way to organize people was more of a result of the More...
I would say this is right up there for one of the best books I've read this year.
A few of the ideas that resonated with me:
- Many of the things we take for granted as a culture are merely 'accidents of history'. That large corporations have traditionally been the best way to organize people was more of a result of the More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
