Clay Shirky: How cognitive surplus will change the world

Another interesting TED talk from Clay Shirky on how “cognitive surplus” - the shared, online work we do with our spare cycles is something that, if harnessed correctly in our society - will help to change the world for good.  He also talks about what drives human behavior (personal reward/cost vs social constraints) - and how not to motivate people to do the right thing.

I’m certainly a believer in the power of the ‘social contribution economy’.  Well worth a watch.

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Here Comes Everybody: Organizing Without Organizations

Clay Shirky / Flickr by Joi / CC BY 2.0

I’ve just come across the ARS Technica review of Clay Shirky’s book ‘Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations’. The tagline for the book could be summed up in the initial quote “Communications tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring,”.

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How social media can make history

Another excellent TED talk, with a crystal clear presentation from Clay Shirky on how the world of media has changed. If you have a message and want to get it out to the world, or have a product and want to market it, you need to spend 15 minutes of your life watching this.

“While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics.”