[Clay Shirky: How Social Media Can Make History.]
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The way Shirky sees the world is an optimistic and hopeful view of a more productive future. It may seem as though the internet and technology only helps to create ease with our daily tasks, however this is not completely true. It can be used to procrastinate and waste time, on such platforms as 'Twitter', 'Facebook' and 'Tumblr'. There are other ways to be productive and, contribute and create information, this can be in the form of crowd-sourcing, which “...can be explained through a theory of crowd wisdom, an exercise of collective intelligence.” (Brabham, D. C. 2008:87) An example of this would be wikipedia, which is the largest crowd-sourcing platform on the web which was built on the idea that more heads are better than one. A single company couldn't manage to keep the online encyclopaedia running, but with the help of volunteers creating and editing pages, the system works. As more and more people join the information is updated, and although we can see there are downsides to the project, what with people editing posts for entertainment, they are soon returned back to the original state and so we see that peer-production has a large and somewhat successful effect on our society and it follows along with what Shirky is arguing: that the internet can be used for better services and be put to good use.
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In cognitive surplus, Shirky discusses how the passive participation of television almost consumed us entirely, before the internet was created. How he discusses the issue seems to make it feel like watching television was a bad thing, and that being passive is something to not be doing. But the passive nature of watching television may not necessarily be true. There were times where the television programs of the day would be discussed by friends and family, therefore engaging their audience in an active way. Also, being passive whilst watching television could be positive in some cases, as it can reduce anxiety and help fight depression. Granted, Shirky does state early in cognitive surplus that watching small amounts of television wouldn't harm you, quoting the phrase: “the dose is the poison.” So Shirky does seem aware of watching television in limited doses could be beneficial, but his argument seems to stem from the idea that we simply watch too much television for it to be helpful or productive.
Shirky follows the idea that with the creation of the internet, we have all suddenly become active users, creators and thinkers. This isn't true as television has moved to more active forms of engagement, and the internet can indeed be passive. I use the example of the television show: Defiance, where the television show and the game actually collide. The active form of engagment, the game, collides and participates in the passive entertainment that is the television show. But this is only one example of where the passive and active collide. Netflicks is a much larger example. With Netflicks we see the way television has taken the next step in understanding their audience, and what they want. Audiences today want synchronic entertainment, they want the power to choose what to engage with, when to engage with it, and where to engage with the it. Watching the television show in on itself is still however, a passive action. So we see another way upon which the passive and the active have collided, meaning Shirky's very definite view of what is active and what is passive to be on shaky foundations.
Shirky however, does have a point. He shows the reader how in today's world, we have an almost unlimited number of platforms in which to be actively engaged with. Twitter, Facebook, flicker, tumblr, instagram, soundcloud, google plus amongst a host of others available to us because our technology has advanced. We are no longer passive in our consumption of media, and in fact we no longer simply consuming media for we are actively adding to the media. Cognitive Surplus states that “young populations with access to fast, interactive media are shifting their behaviour away from media that presupposes pure consumption” (Shirky, C. 2010: 11). An example of this is the social networking site DeviantArt, which you can see from the image to the left, beautiful images are created daily and shared, showing that the internet isn't all bad.
With the new technologies available at our disposal, we are more connected than ever. We have an almost unlimited connection to people around the world at our fingertips, as mobile phones have allowed us to carry our connections with us all the time. Just looking at social networking sites, there are over one billion users of Facebook alone, over eighty five million users are on Flickr with eight billion photos being shared on the site. (Smith, C. 2013) We live in an increasingly smaller world, as our connections increase in number. This has lead to an increase in crowd-sourcing, and not in the corporate fashion.
With the new technologies available at our disposal, we are more connected than ever. We have an almost unlimited connection to people around the world at our fingertips, as mobile phones have allowed us to carry our connections with us all the time. Just looking at social networking sites, there are over one billion users of Facebook alone, over eighty five million users are on Flickr with eight billion photos being shared on the site. (Smith, C. 2013) We live in an increasingly smaller world, as our connections increase in number. This has lead to an increase in crowd-sourcing, and not in the corporate fashion.