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Cognitive Surplus
Book

Cognitive Surplus

Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age

Clay Shirky
Penguin, 2010

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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Innovative

Recommendation

This brainy book, with its fascinating historical and scientific references, illuminates a central aspect of 21st century life – what people are doing on the Internet actively and jointly with the thinking time they used to spend watching TV passively and alone – and enables readers to see this slice of human experience in a new way. New York University professor Clay Shirky intelligently and insightfully explains how putting the Internet and its online social media tools into the hands of nearly two billion people who have more than a trillion hours of free time is resulting in a new, optimistic and empowered world. He cites such unique, useful Web developments as Wikipedia, PickupPal.com, the Apache Project and countless other online wonders. If you don’t yet fully understand the potential of social media, you will when you read this book. getAbstract recommends this outstanding work to anyone who wants to know more about how and why the Internet and social media are dramatically changing the world.

Summary

What 21st-Century TV Watchers Have in Common with 18th-Century Drunks

During the 1720s, London was the sodden haven of drunks, specifically gin mill drunks who had recently migrated from the countryside to seek work in the sprawling capital. Gin was the perfect libation for these displaced, bewildered new urban citizens: It was cheap, easy to make and far more inebriating than beer. These former country folk used gin to anesthetize themselves against the pressures of life in a distressing, unfamiliar urban environment. Removed from their country kith and kin, these new Londoners lapped up gin to help them adapt to a strange, hostile metropolis and cope with the perplexing vagaries of city life. Gin consumption was a “reaction to the real problem – dramatic social change and the inability of older civic models to adapt.”

Alarmed by the gin drinkers’ public drunkenness, Londoners petitioned Parliament to fix the problem. It passed one law after another against gin “production, consumption or sale.” But the gin producers, merchants and drinkers found many clever ways around the new rules. The “cat-and-mouse game” of “Gin Craze” lawmaking continued for 30 years, and then...

About the Author

Clay Shirky is an assistant arts professor and writer in residence at New York University. He is the author of Here Comes Everybody.

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