May

6

Cognitive Surplus

Filed Under regular reads, things to ponder about, things to remind myself, time management, winds of change 

If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, .. I’d say it was the sitcom. Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened–rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before–free time.

And what did we do with that free time? Well, mostly we spent it watching TV.

We did that for decades. We watched I Love Lucy. We watched Gilligan’s Island. We watch Malcolm in the Middle. We watch Desperate Housewives. Desperate Housewives essentially functioned as a kind of cognitive heat sink, dissipating thinking that might otherwise have built up and caused society to overheat.

I’m not by any means ashamed to say that I don’t watch TV. I just can’t find the time to. I also don’t actually own one either. In fact, if I had a telly in my bedroom, I _would_ actually end up wasting a few hours a day actually watching it–so much that I actually make it a conscious decision *not* own a TV, much less have one in my own bedroom.

Having a TV in the living room is a large enough deterrent for me. (A) I’m most never at home anyway (B) I won’t just sit in the living room for the sake of watching TV. So while there’s a large phat LCD TV in my living room (belongs to the guys I live with) .. I still simply don’t watch TV. I do love TV though, don’t get me wrong.

One of the things I am interested in is information economics. Related to that is the attention economy–something else that I also am interested in. The wealth of information causes a poverty of attention. In a classic opportunity-cost fashion, not spending my time and attention on the telly allows me to do other much more productive things.

NYU professor Clay Shirky’s talk on Cognitive Surplus at the last Web 2.0 Expo validates my position! :) Ok, well aside from that .. it’s actually really insightful and informative. I highly recommend you watch it. The entire transcript can be found here.

From the blog of Jeremy Zawodny.

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