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“Cognitive surplus is just raw material. To get any value out of it, we have to make it mean or do things. We, collectively, aren’t just the source of the surplus; we are also the people designing its use, by our participation and by the things we expect of one another as we wrestle together with our new connectedness” (Shirky, 2010, p. 29).
Shirky. C. (2010, June 10). How cognitive surplus will change the world. TED. Retrieved from
Cognitive Surplus: the ability of the world’s population to volunteer, contribute, and collaborate on a large and sometimes global scale.
Civic Value: created by the participants for each other.
Communal Value: created by the participants but enjoyed by the society as a whole.
The Importance: Clay Shirky (2010) explains about a program called “Ushahidi” which was created as a platform to consolidate all of the information of the violence going on in Kenya into one place. Ushahidi was developed to aggregate dispersed knowledge into one collective nationwide picture creating a mass awareness of what was going on (Shirky, 2010). The founders decided to turn Ushahidi into a platform so that anyone could set up their own service for collecting and mapping information. So Ushahidi has also been used in Washington D.C. to track snow cleanup, in Mexico to track electoral fraud, and most famously in Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake (Shirky, 2010). This open source is available to anyone, from anywhere and is a great example of cognitive surplus on a civic level. Another great example is Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a collective website where anyone can edit and add information as they please. It’s not exactly a credible source because of that fact, but it is a huge display of cognitive surplus.
The Lessons:
People want to do something to make the world a better place. They will help when they are invited to.
Access to cheap, flexible tools removes any of the barriers to trying new things. You don’t need fancy computers to harness cognitive surplus.
Once you’ve figured out how to tap the surplus in a way that people care about, others can replicate your technique, over and over, around the world (Shirky, 2010).
The Ethical Issues:
Not all communication tools like Ushahidi are all civically engaged.
Some collaborative projects are created with little effort and target nothing worth while, except perhaps to elicit crude humor.
“The stupidest possible creative act is still a creative act” (Shirky, 2010, p. 18).
Sometimes cognitive surplus is just mediocre. The mediocrity is bridging the gap between doing nothing and doing something, which does not aid in productivity.
“The phrase ‘user-generated content’ the current label for creative acts by amateurs, really describes not just personal but also social acts” (Shirky, 2010, p. 19).
Sometimes the amateur content being created is not just user-generated, it is user-shared. The sharing part is what makes the making fun.
Like Shirky said, there are two types of value, one is communal and one is civic, and both can be used in good and bad ways.
Programs such as Ushahidi are used positively, like what they used it for in Kenya. But hackers and other programmers could use it against the system for things such as tracking drugs, guns, prostitution, etc. It’s a very powerful tool and it all depends on the intentions of the user on how productive it is to society.
Why we need to bring cognitive surplus into our educational settings: Cognitive surplus goes hand-in-hand with participatory culture. Participatory culture is important in an educational setting because it is an opposite concept to consumer culture and it promotes our students to be contributors and producers.
How do we fill the gap? Students, parents, teachers, administrators and the community need to understand the importance of cognitive surplus and it’s incredible potential. They need to start spending their free time contributing, and do less consuming. We have always found the time to do things that interest us, and lately, our unstructured time has been used up by binge watching TV such as Netflix and playing video games such as World of Warcraft (Shirky, 2010). We need to teach our students to use their valuable free time to be active participants and act as if their presence matters. This doesn’t mean we can stop our students from mindlessly watching TV, but we can offer young people opportunities to produce and share.
Media in the 21st century is like a triathlon:
People like to consume.
People like to produce.
People like to share.
Consumption does not always have to be the only way we use media. We need to also expand our focus to include producing and sharing. People must be able to donate their free time to collective efforts and produce cognitive surplus (Shirky, 2010).
“Our ability to balance consumption with production and sharing, our ability to connect with one another, is transforming the sense of media from a particular sector of the economy to a cheap and globally available tool for organized sharing” (Shirky, 2010, p. 27).
Future Actions in the Middle School & High School Art Rooms
Murals have been around as long as people, from cave paintings to street murals today. Murals hold a great significance by depicting everyday activities, traditions, diversity, and culture. Murals build a sense of community. They reach people on a communal and civic level of cognitive surplus. This strong art form is a great example of cognitive surplus because it socially engages students, teachers, staff, administrators, parents, and the community. We want to continue this tradition within our school communities so our students can see the benefits of communication, creation, collaboration and contribution. Below are some lessons that we will be taking inspiration from.
Student Art on a Communal Level
The Art of Ed - Legacy Mural Project (art that continues each year)
This mural was sponsored by the LEF Foundation to help create the concept that people working together can make a positive change in their community, that they can learn to respect each others differences, and that despite cultural differences we can work together for the common good. The mural was conceived, designed and painted by youth from the East Oakland Youth Development Center (EOYDC).
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