Cognitive Surplus

In his TED talk, Clay Shirky talked about what he called cognitive surplus, which is what individuals do in their spare time to help the good of the society. The two different types of cognitive surplus he mentioned, communal and civic, both have profound effects on societies worldwide. Communal cognitive surplus is the material created to benefit an individual community of people who have a common interest. The material made is not necessarily beneficial but is funny or enjoyable for that group of people. This type of cognitive surplus is a major part of what Daniel Pink focuses on in his books Drive and A Whole New Mind. The motivation for this right-brained activity is to help out the community, not for a prize or reward. People want to help other people for the sake of helping, not for what they can get out of it. This type of cognitive surplus is highly undervalued in today's society, and is seen as more of an afterthought or the remains of the other type of cognitive surplus, which is called civic cognitive surplus. Civic cognitive surplus is matter that is beneficial not only to an individual community, but also to the whole of the world. This material is seen as extremely beneficial, and is made out to be the most important part of cognitive surplus as a whole. The way that Clay Shirky presented this material is that civic cognitive surplus is indeed the most important type of cognitive surplus, and communal cognitive surplus is an inevitable result of helping people out. This is not the way that both should be compared. I see this as a more traditional way of thinking, that one way is completely better than the other. I see both communal and civic cognitive surplus being equally helpful; they just have different areas of expertise. Communal cognitive surplus helps out more on an individual basis, which means that it can more deeply affect people than civic cognitive surplus. Civic cognitive surplus affects a wider range of people across the globe, but not as personally or intimately as communal cognitive surplus. Both types of cognitive surplus need to be understood for what they really are, and not be compared as the same thing. One issue that society has is that if it's not important to them, than it has no value at all. This is a view that needs to change. Clay Shirky had a great example of this using the LOL cats. These are pictures of funny cats with funny captions. These are highly valued by many people, but some see these as useless and therefore unimportant. They are not inferior to other types of information or entertainment; they are just different ways of expressing creativity, and creativity is something that should not be compressed into what society values.