The premise of our paradigm shift: or, how the executive team was sold on an idea…
Posted in technology, work on 05/13/2008 05:09 pm by karenNYU professor Clay Shirky recently used the term “cognitive surplus” to refer to the brain power we have left over at the end of the day. When you’re done thinking about the things you have to think about, what’s left is your cognitive surplus.
In the past, turning cognitive surplus into a product involved time, specialized teams and production expense: individual people did not have means to create their own video programming, music products, encyclopedias, published writings, etc. People organized specialized teams to do those things, and the rest of us sat around and consumed them.
Web 2.0 changes all of that. The means of production are available to anyone with a computer, and there are plenty of people out there who want to collaborate and interact and actively create content.
Chances are, if you are reading this blog, you are already keenly aware of all of this.
It’s very fun to see it catch hold as a notion at work.