I was being interviewed by a TV producer to see whether I should be on their show, and she asked me, “What are you seeing out there that’s interesting?”
I started telling her about the Wikipedia article on Pluto. You may remember that Pluto got kicked out of the planet club a couple of years ago, so all of a sudden there was all of this activity on Wikipedia. The talk pages light up, people are editing the article like mad, and the whole community is in an ruckus–”How should we characterize this change in Pluto’s status?” And a little bit at a time they move the article–fighting offstage all the while–from, “Pluto is the ninth planet,” to “Pluto is an odd-shaped rock with an odd-shaped orbit at the edge of the solar system.”
So I tell her all this stuff, and I think, “Okay, we’re going to have a conversation about authority or social construction or whatever.” That wasn’t her question. She heard this story and she shook her head and said, “Where do people find the time?” That was her question. And I just kind of snapped. And I said, “No one who works in TV gets to ask that question. You know where the time comes from. It comes from the cognitive surplus you’ve been masking for 50 years.”
The whole article is essential reading to understanding the implications of everybody being a potential publisher as internet use starts to overtake television consumption. His book Here Comes Everybody is also recommended.
Nick Booth spotted the same article a while back and I left a comment outlining why I thought the Cognitive Surplus theory was utter bullshit.
Dave
For the record, Dave’s comment:
Cognitive surplus? Hang on, is this written by an American? There’s a foul whiff of pseudo-science about this and that ever-so-confident air that comes from those new media converts who think their lives are better than ours.
Honestly, this has made me really quite cross. You could just as easily say that any form of popular culture was one great big diversion. I think media and cultural theory has moved on from this position hasn’t it? That the masses don’t know what’s good for them and somehow need saving? I actually find engaging with social media way more of a diversion than television ever has been.
“Here’s something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here’s something four-year-olds know: Media that’s targeted at you but doesn’t include you may not be worth sitting still for.”
I could Fisk the whole article (that bit about the crime map – isn’t that a bit Tory?) but I’ll settle with the above as an example. My five year old more than understands the difference between a TV and a computer (and is very good with a trackpad rather than a mouse). She uses the latter much as she uses a book or a piece of blank paper. That is, she creates and engages with it. She does with new media what she could do with old media except I don’t let her get the messy paints out as often as the laptop. And the only thing she’ll really sit still for is a magician or a storyteller or a clown in a theatrical setting.
Arguments that draw on the presumed ‘wisdom of the child’ just demonstrate how lacking in substance they are. Not even my five year old is naïve enough to think that the world is about to change for the good just because we’re watching a bit less Cbeebies these days.
Dave,
The important thing here, I think, is the distinction between passive culture and active culture. You’ll note he’s talking about sit-coms in particular – the sort of media that you just sit back and absorb.
There’s nothing wrong with being distracted by popular culture but being distracted by it doesn’t stop it from being active. Projects like Wikipedia work best because they are a distraction that doesn’t require too much effort yet in aggregate it creates a valuable resource. This is what I find exciting.
Another example – I passively consume YouTube videos and funny pictures of cats but I then actively blog the best ones (along with other stuff) onto my Tumblr. It doesn’t take any real effort but I’m creating something of use to someone else. How do I find the time? It’s part of the process.
And after all, Television, it’s the drug of the nation. ;)
I can see where you’re coming from but television consumption is rarely passive in whatever genre. We know this because that’s generally where Television Studies has been at since the 1970s. Indeed Cultural Studies has always positioned the audience as ‘active’, that’s why Shirky’s point strikes me as based on a flawed knowledge of how television has functioned as part of people’s lives.
All I’m actually saying here and the reason I chose to reply to this (and bear with me on this one for a minute cos’ it might sound a bit tossy) is that I think Birmingham should take a view on social media and we should develop a sophisticated school of thought about what use we make of it. If we’re to be this grand digital city thing then obviously a whole load of stuff needs to fall into place, much of which people like yourself are at the forefront of making happen (co-working stuff especially). There’s some strategic things that should happen as well of course but what I haven’t seen yet is what the Birmingham view is on all this. What’s our position?
My concern is that if we read Shirky without critiquing it then we’ll just go on the basis that Old Media=passive, New Media=active. Therefore the kind of interventions you need to develop active citizenship in the digital age will be based on the notion that most people will kind of get there in the end. That’s not sophisticated thinking. So we need to firstly recognise that poorly thought through positions like Shirky’s need interrogating and secondly, begin to have a dialogue on our blogs and in our comments about what our own position is.
We should be working towards a Birmingham School of Thought on Social Media and in my eyes we’re not far from having enough thoughtful players out there – academics, entrepreneurs, students, cultural workers – who can contribute. That will leave a legacy like no policy initiative or funded project ever could.
Dave