In the final decades of the twentieth century, industrial labor lost its hegemony and in its stead emerged 'immaterial labor' labor that creates immaterial products such as knowledge, information, communication, a relationship, or an emotional response.
-Michel Hardt and Antonio Negri.
These words were written in 2001 and should be familiar to any service or knowledge worker. Meanwhile a new book out by techno-idealist Clay Shirky, called Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (Penguin Press, June 2010) purports that today we are so flush with immaterial labor we now find ourselves in excess of it. At a book talk tonight, Shirky tasked himself with categorizing activity of cognitive surplus online into a social spectrum online.*
As its title suggests, Shirky's first book, Here Comes Everyone, had a-give-it-up-guys tone for the content producers who cherish their bottleneck on information (journalists!) while outside the teeming net-masses storm the barracks of proprietary content. Likewise, in Surplus Shirky maintains his faith in wise crowds and collaborative amateur enterprise, but here he zooms in on why we donate time for free. These ethonomics have been discussed ad nauseum by all the pop economists who look at irrational motivations in human behavior. So much do we value our self-worth that we are compelled to contribute cognitive labors in our free time. If you've ever been promoted from underpaid intern to salaried employee, and found your enthusiasm zapped, you will understand this concept.
In the beginning of his talk, Shirky said that collectively, Americans spend about 100 million hours every weekend watching just the advertisements on television. Just the advertisements.They spend far more watching whole shows. This same figure, he says, also reflects how much time Americans spend yearly on Wikipedia, contributing to the creative commons, and the most trenchant bit Shirky dangled before the audience last night was the question: What if we tapped into that surplus? He didn't answer, but it is worth asking it if would supply the world with more LOLCATS or more social justice?
-Cognitive Surplus- the word sounds snappy and at one point in the evening's Q &A Shirky politely corrected an audience member who used it as a catchphrase: "I don't want the term to turn into a Longtail type phrase" he said, quickly. But thinking about it, what exactly does the fact that we call this a cognitive surplus imply? How different is it from the brain power that ordinary humans may have logged into an old thing called 'civic engagement'? Must we 'monetize' every waking moment so that the moments without recompense we now call 'surplus?'.
This was another question untouched in Surplus, or at least, not in the talk Shriky gave last night (Hardt and Negri would answer yes). Since I'm not getting paid to write this, I didn't buy the book. By the time it would have taken to obtain a press copy, some unprofessional (apologies guys!) online would have already scooped me. Or the wikipedia page. Plus I'm lazy. Pretty unprofessional huh? Well I'm doing this for free! For self worth. Wht do you expct? Copy-edited prose and fact-checking? If you would like to know whether or not Shirky addresses this question in his new book, it will cost you $39 dollars, and at 256 pages about a weeks' worth of your own cognitive surplus in order to find out.
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*At the base level, he spoke of the personal (1) contribution; sites like LOLCATS where anyone can upload a cute photo and add text. Next, we see the communal (2) level of activity in organizations like "Yahoo Groups"while revolve around a topic of interest that is shared by many but ultimately self-serving, third (3) the Public, a space where ideas (and in his example, code) is exchanged, and finally (4) the civic, demonstrated in groups where participants work actively to change the hegemonic culture for the good. For the last example, Shirky refers to Patientslikeme.com, a site where people afflicted with a specific disease (Lou Gehrig's for example) congregate and talk openly about their symptoms and feelings. In a culture where disease symptoms cannot often be discussed openly, especially around healthy subjects, the site fosters within itself a culture of acceptance, and from without, helps to shift perceptions of the condition in the social sphere. Not only that, but the aggregation of like-patients under one roof is unheard of in typical medical tests, and PatientsLikeme has the potential to provide doctors with instant test groups, helping them advance treatment. Shriky cites another civic example in the tongue-in-cheek "Pink Chaddis" Facebook group started by an Indian journalist to shame a group of social conservatives whom had started a campaign to beat "loose" pub-going women in Mangalore. Shirky applauded the power of social networking to effect change. Admitting that this applause was 'old news', he put a fine point on it by saying that what really interested him was the political power of the movement, which was strong enough to lead to the arrest of the Sena group's leader.
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