Clay Shirky, Web 2.0 Expo 2008
Gin, Television and Social Surplus
Clay Shirky recently gave a talk at the Web 2.0 Expo, 2008 entitled “Gin, Television and Social Surplus”. video, text
There is a question that I have answered hundreds of times over the past ten years (since starting to play MMO’s, producing web pages, blogging and other online activities): “Where do you find the time to do this?” My answer has always been “I don’t watch much TV anymore“. I’ve also seen many people that I work with respond in like when they are asked that same question. Of all the things we allocate our daily free time to, movies and TV are the least important and most expendable sources of free time. Over the past year, as I’ve networked with more and more people who are immersed in Web 2.0 and virtual worlds, I hear this same answer from all of them as to where they find time to do the things that they do.
Here are some quotes from Shirky’s talk that really strike true to this theme (go and watch the video before reading any further):
“If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would’ve come off the whole enterprise, I’d say it was the sitcom. Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened–rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before–free time.
And what did we do with that free time? Well, mostly we spent it watching TV.” . . . .
“And it’s only now, as we’re waking up from that collective bender, that we’re starting to see the cognitive surplus as an asset rather than as a crisis. We’re seeing things being designed to take advantage of that surplus, to deploy it in ways more engaging than just having a TV in everybody’s basement.”
After talking to a TV producer, trying to explain Wikipedia and the debate about Pluto’s status as a planet, Shirky said:
“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.”
And there it is, Clay nailed it square on the head, his aim could not have been truer. The one trait that every single successful trailblazer in new technologies share, be they Web 2.0, social media, virtual worlds or even MMO’s, is a large reduction (or elimination) of time spent sitting passively in front of a TV. And if you are one of these people, you are sitting there now as you read this shaking your head in the affirmative.
To drive the point home, Shirky illustrates just how large this surplus is using the entire Wikipedia as a unit of measure:
“So how big is that 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 accumulation 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.”
Later in his talk he touches on World of Warcraft and Gilligan’s Island:
“In this same conversation with the TV producer I was talking about World of Warcraft guilds, and as I was talking, I could sort of see what she was thinking: “Losers. Grown men sitting in their basement pretending to be elves.”
At least they’re doing something.
Did you ever see that episode of Gilligan’s Island where they almost get off the island and then Gilligan messes up and then they don’t? I saw that one. I saw that one a lot when I was growing up. And every half-hour that I watched that was a half an hour I wasn’t posting at my blog or editing Wikipedia or contributing to a mailing list. Now I had an ironclad excuse for not doing those things, which is none of those things existed then. I was forced into the channel of media the way it was because it was the only option. Now it’s not, and that’s the big surprise. However lousy it is to sit in your basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal experience it’s worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter.”
His observation about media definitely highlights the shift we are starting to see:
“This is something that people in the media world don’t understand. Media in the 20th century was run as a single race–consumption. How much can we produce? How much can you consume? Can we produce more and you’ll consume more? And the answer to that question has generally been yes. But media is actually a triathlon, it ’s three different events. People like to consume, but they also like to produce, and they like to share.”
People are tired of passive involvement in media. There is nowhere near a critical mass of people abandoning broadcast media, but there is a definite movement towards other forms of interactive media, everything from video games to virtual worlds, blogs to wikis, and podcasts to video. To drive home his point, Shirky extrapolates what would happen if people only tapped into 1% of this surplus:
“It’s so large that even a small change could have huge ramifications. Let’s say that everything stays 99 percent the same, that people watch 99 percent as much television as they used to, but 1 percent of that is carved out for producing and for sharing. The Internet-connected population watches roughly a trillion hours of TV a year. That’s about five times the size of the annual U.S. consumption. One per cent of that is 100 Wikipedia projects per year worth of participation. “
He finishes up his talk telling a story about a friend of his watching a DVD with their 4 year old daughter. It’s a funny story that really illustrates how the younger members of our society get this, and want nothing to do with passive consumption of media. You’ll need to watch the video of his talk (highly recommended) or read the transcript for the full story (and more).
How do you find the time?
Shirky did an excellent job of defending those who are breaking from the herd and spending insane amounts of time working on innovative projects that leverage communities and new media online. This is especially true in education. There are those that are content with the way things are, and even more who were more than happy with how things were before . . . . . but only a few that stray out into uncharted waters and take a risk promoting something that is completely new, or even more frighteningly still under development (how many projects never see v1.0?).
Why do some educators take a risk on promoting new technologies? We do it because we see our students coming to school and powering down, shutting off their channels of communication with the world, and going through the motions to get through the day. We see devices that could be leveraged for education (MP3 players, smart phones, ebook readers, and other media consumption and communication devices) banned on our campuses as a knee jerk reaction by administrators to a few negative stories in the media. MySpace is an excellent example of this. A flurry of negative MySpace stories probably set social networking on our campuses back at least two to three years. Only now are some innovative school districts integrating these technologies into their curriculum and engaging their students.
In an environment where risk is often not rewarded, we need to encourage more teachers, more educators, and yes even administrators to take more risks. Reach out and try to see the possibilities of the devices your children and grandchildren take for granted. Get up off the couch and get involved in a community. Stop passively floating through your free time watching “Deal or No Deal”, and instead go out and make a big deal about new technologies that will benefit our kids and engage our students in their learning. Don’t condemn an entire technology because one person abused it in some terrible way that drew national media coverage. Our number one goal is educating our youth, engaging them in their education, and preparing them for the future (one we can barely imagine).
When you see that teacher or administrator out promoting something new, something cutting edge, and something that seems to be catching the attention of the students don’t just dismiss it as a fad, or a waste of time. Take a closer look, ask some questions, and maybe even try it out yourself to see what the buzz is all about. It takes communities to make fundamental shifts in how we do things, and it all starts with individuals willing to take a risk on something new. And above all else, don’t be afraid of failure. And as Shirky states in his talk:
“The way you explore complex ecosystems is you just try lots and lots and lots of things, and you hope that everybody who fails fails informatively so that you can at least find a skull on a pikestaff near where you’re going. That’s the phase we’re in now.”
So keep a blog or join a community and share your experiences with others about your projects. And Clay, why can’t I download your new book to my Kindle? When searching the Kindle Store I can only buy the hardback. Is it because the Kindle does not have a mouse? Great talk, excellent points, I’ve got to track down a copy of your book.
