What I did with my cognitive surplus over the July 4 long weekend
Here at IfWeRanTheWorld, Clay Shirky is our god.
A couple of years ago when I shared the concept of IfWeRanTheWorld with my friend Josh Klein, he said to me, a) you have to read Clay Shirky’s ‘Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations’, and b) you have to meet Clay Shirky.
I immediately bought ‘Here Comes Everybody’, and on every page I went, OMG, this man is writing about exactly what we’re doing. Then Josh got us a meeting with Clay, who immediately ‘got’ IfWeRanTheWorld (of course), blew us all away with his insights and observations, and was kind enough to say that he would like to be involved and be our advisor (whereupon we all melted onto the floor in puddles of joy). Alas, his workload and schedule overtook that, but we continue to worship him and enjoy saying hi when we see him at the ITP Spring and Winter shows each year.
So I spent my cognitive surplus (Clay’s term for the surfeit of intellect, energy and time we all have these days) over the Independence Day weekend reading ‘Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age’.
Two of my favorite things in the world are topless sunbathing and Clay Shirky. Together = heaven :)
Cognitive surplus is what IfWeRanTheWorld is designed to run on. Clay writes about the opportunity to ‘make civic action contagious’:
Civic value rarely comes from sudden social conversions; nor does it bubble up from individual actions. It comes, instead, from the work of groups, small groups at first that grow in size and importance, the pattern of collaborative circles, communities and practice, and many other group patterns. If we want to create new forms of civic value, we need to improve the ability of small groups to try radical things.
Together with all of you who have joined us on IfWeRanTheWorld, we’re starting really small. We’re embarking on a social experiment to see if the small groups we’re creating right now of like-minded microactors can try radical things to make the world around us - from our own little corners of it all the way to the world at large - the world we’d all like to live in.
We’re doing this together very much in the spirit of another quote from ‘Cognitive Surplus’:
Creating the most value from a tool involves not master plans or great leaps forward but constant trial and error.
We appreciate all of you bearing with us on the ‘trial and error’ front currently!
Do buy and read ‘Cognitive Surplus’ forthwith - and let us know what you think.
Cindy
