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The cognitive surplus is the reason this blog exists, and likely the reason you’re reading it right now. According to author Clay Shirky, it’s also responsible for things like the Industrial Revolution, and it may be about to change the way we live in an even more dramatic way.
The classic example of cognitive surplus is this: when British society started becoming more urban and crowding into London in the mid 18th century, it took people awhile to realize they were sitting on a cognitive gold mine; all those minds together in one place had an unprecedented potential to accomplish great things. But they were so freaked out by the sudden disappearance of the way of life their families had cultivated for a thousand years, and at finding themselves stuck in the increasingly loud, rank, dangerous city of London, that instead of taking advantage of their new situation, they spent a lot of time drinking gin. In fact, Shirky argues, they went on a generation-long bender, so extreme that “the stories from that era are amazing — there were gin pushcarts working their way through the streets of London.” No joke:
In the 18th century there was an epidemic of gin drinking in England. Rot-gut gin was destroying lives and families. Gin shops sold their product for one penny a pint. People died in vast numbers from cirrhosis of the liver. In London there were twice as many burials as baptisms. William Hogarth’s savage portrait of Gin Lane in 1751 (above) stressed the terrible dissolution of the time: a house is falling down, a corpse is being put into a cart and a woman is so drunk that she is dropping her baby over a railing.
Flash forward to the 1950s. The war is over, Americans are cooling their 
heels back home, enjoying something they never experienced during the Depression or the War that followed: free time. And kind of a lot of it, really; in other words, a cognitive surplus. And what should come along in response to this new national surplus? The Golden Age of Television, of course. So according to this hopefully not-too-tortured analogy, Americans’ TV in the 50s was a bit like Londers’ gin pushcarts in the 1760s; it was a way to spend a cognitive surplus we didn’t quite know what to do with yet. But instead of an Industrial Revolution coming along to take advantage of our cognitive surplus in a useful way, Shirky argues, we got the internet. Here’s where this train of thought gets really interesting:
So how big is our surplus? So if you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project–every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in–that represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought. I worked this out with Martin Wattenberg at IBM; it’s a back-of-the-envelope calculation, but it’s the right order of magnitude, about 100 million hours of thought.
And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that’s 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads. This is a pretty big surplus. People asking, “Where do they find the time?” when they’re looking at things like Wikipedia don’t understand how tiny that entire project is, as a carve-out of this asset that’s finally being dragged into what Tim calls an architecture of participation.
Now, the interesting thing about a surplus like that is that society doesn’t know what to do with it at first–hence the gin, hence the sitcoms. Because if people knew what to do with a surplus with reference to the existing social institutions, then it wouldn’t be a surplus, would it? It’s precisely when no one has any idea how to deploy something that people have to start experimenting with it, in order for the surplus to get integrated, and the course of that integration can transform society.
All of which, naturally, got me thinking about my own personal surplus. Sure, we all feel busy, but once you start adding up the hours I’ve spent freaking out over Lost or shredding the competition in multiplayer online Guitar Hero, it becomes significant. I did a back-of-napkin calculation of my own, and figured that I’ve spent roughly 1,000 hours blogging for mental_floss since 2006. (I’m sure the time I’ve spent watching TV and movies is at least twice that, if not more.) But instead of figuring out what else I could be doing with that time, I’ll ask you guys:
What’s your annual cognitive surplus? Is there anything you’d rather be doing with it?
I don’t know exactly how big my cognitive surplus is, but I’m pretty happy spending it the way I do…on crochet, the Office, the internet, and gaming.
posted by Fruppi on 5-19-2008 at 12:26 pm
So I figure my cognative surplus is fairly large I only need about 1/4 of my cognative function to do my job adequately. Now I’ll have to figure something out to think about
posted by Bree on 5-19-2008 at 12:38 pm
I’d like to see gin carts brought back into circulation…
posted by Christian on 5-19-2008 at 12:39 pm
I don’t have the time, or initiative, to calculate my cognitave surplus (boy theres alot one could read into or project onto that statement huh?).
Nevertheless I can say that not too long ago I had a relatively brief experience (~6 months) with no cognitave surplus. I was involved in a project that literally consumed all my waking hours and gave me a pretty interesting mixture of dreams and nightmares to boot.
This is not healthy.
Its amazing what a lack of diversity in thoughts can cause. I normally do not have much trouble maintaining idle conversation with people, but even after this experience there were periods where for no apparent reason I would lose my train of thought during conversation, or worse yet insert phrases or acronyms that were related to the project. To many during this period I probably seriously seemed to have developped some form of attention disorder or nerdy touretts.
So I think there’s something to be said about letting your mind graze a little on ‘the internets’ or suck in the cool sweet breeze of photons streaming from the boob tube.
posted by brick_city_man on 5-19-2008 at 12:50 pm
My surplus is used in going to school full-time, while working full-time, being a single mom, and having a long distance relationship.
TV? What’s TV? Only once or twice a week do I think to get on here, mentalfloss.com, to read, which is how I use my surplus.
posted by Julianna on 5-19-2008 at 2:44 pm
I think my annual surplus (with the exception of work) is music and all measures relating to it:
-listening, shows, playing. I spend a large amount of time in this subject. However, you can always multitask while listening to music.
I can’t think of a better way of spending my time with the exception of being socially active.
posted by Christophe on 5-19-2008 at 3:05 pm
My surplus is so vast, it’s embarrassing.
But I enjoy it greatly with Lost, Netflix, Mental Floss, Cross-stitching, and…………Gin. (Or rum, or beer.)
posted by Beth on 5-19-2008 at 6:22 pm
Pinball, MF, Lost, GTA, Facebook, Netflix, and multiple Beers. And Pancakes.
Total Annual Surplus: Way too much.
posted by Dan on 5-19-2008 at 9:01 pm
I watched Shirky’s presentation on youtube and didn’t find it a waste of my mental energies. Just like I don’t find watching other videos on youtube a waste of my mental time.
While I find his theories on cognitive surplus fascinating, I think that Shirky is unnecessarily harsh on television.
I just graduated with a degree in Television as fate would have it. And I find it totally insulting that Shirky dismisses the entire medium (and especially the sitcom) as a timesuck.
Entertainment has value. Unfathomable educational value and social significance. Yes, even According to Jim. Setting aside Shirky’s arguments against the medium itself, old-style three camera sitcoms make a theater out of every living room in America. Often it’s a person’s first exposure to acting, and staged drama. While the quality of the content is subjective, the value of this exposure cannot be shrugged off.
And many rightfully will argue that TV shows expose us to the worst of society, of entertainment. That entirely too much time is spent watching those shows. Many of us have had lost weekends with VH1 countdown shows, but even those shows provide us a social membrane. A means to interact with other people, converse and share ideals, disgusts.
Shirky just seems a little snobby, I guess. Why can’t the water cooler conversation topic be 30 Rock, politics, AND gin?
Sorry for the long comment, I’m a little touchy when it comes to slamming TV. It may be the medium of infomercials, but it’s also the medium of Mr. Rodgers and I truly believe the good redeems any of the “bad”
posted by Sarah on 5-20-2008 at 1:47 am
Assuming I don’t count my holidays, and every second weekend, my annual surplus on TV and the Internet alone is:
1,348 hours. OH GOOD GOD SAVE ME FROM MYSELF.
posted by Pippa on 5-20-2008 at 4:10 am
The theory is alright, and TV is overwhelingly a waste of time.
One problem is that the ‘crisis’ of Gin drinking in 17th, 18th century London was invented by the upper classes who were fearful of the restless poor.
The wealthy simultaneously supplied the gin, and chastised the drunks.
so, that hardly supports the theory of cognitive surplus.
Because I lack a diploma saying I paid tens of thousands of dollars for a formal education, I’ve always found myself relegated to jobs that don’t require much mental ability. Despite that I find many ways to keep my mind fit without garbage or filler.
I believe that most people don’t like to thik any more than they must. The drivel of commercial television and the superficial (or non-existent) media coverage of important issues serves the desire not to think, and also provides complete opinions. Modern media also discourages analysis or questioning of popular opinion. Media is the modern opiate of the masses.
People like to have thoughts and opinions provided. If only there were a cognative surplus.
posted by Bassman on 5-20-2008 at 9:47 am
SOO wierd - I listened to a piece about Cognitive surplus THIS MORNING on CBC Radio 1 Spark program.
I like that we are now using our cognitive surplus for participatory activities instead of just consuming.
posted by Eenerz on 5-21-2008 at 7:54 pm