Clay Shirky: How Cognitive Surplus Will Change the World?

Clay Shirky’s book tour col­lid­ed with the TED con­fer­ence in Cannes ear­li­er this month, and what you get is a crisp, 13-minute pre­cis of the argu­ments in Shirky’s new book, Cog­ni­tive Sur­plus: Cre­ativ­i­ty and Gen­eros­i­ty in a Con­nect­ed Age. The big ques­tion after watch­ing Shirky’s piece: How can Open Cul­ture draw on the col­lec­tive “cog­ni­tive sur­plus” of our read­ers and deliv­er a more pow­er­ful site to learn­ers world­wide? A lot of it comes down to design/architecture. But what would a re-archi­tect­ed Open Cul­ture site look like? If you have some thoughts, please take a few min­utes to send them our way. Who knows, your think­ing might inspire a whole new approach here.

To delve fur­ther into Shirky’s think­ing, you can lis­ten to his extend­ed inter­view last week on KQED’s Forum, my favorite morn­ing talk show in San Fran­cis­co. Down­load here, or stream below.