Free Falling Into The Cognitive Surplus
Free Time. The two golden words everyone loves to hear but can rarely say they have. But before you say you never have any free time (please, I know you sat in bed last night on an OITNB Netflix binge), think about this: free time was at one point in time relatively non-existent to people. What would you do without your free time? What do you do with it now?
Cognitive Surplus, a term coined by author of the book of the same name Clay Shirkey, basically describes your free time and what you do with it (according to Urban Dictionary). It is also the title of a very intricate book that provides an in-depth analysis on how people have chosen to spend their free time in history and the means, motives, and opportunity behind doing so. If that overwhelmed you a little then don’t worry, I’m here to break it down for you. Let’s start at the beginning.
London, England. The decade was the 1720s and people were looking for work. Math time: what happens when a bunch (and I mean a ton) of people looking for jobs migrate to one city with not enough jobs? City + people — jobs, carry the 1…It means that London underwent a massive social change of urbanization, and there were a lot more people than were were jobs, resulting in free time on a national-scale.
Once people had the leisure of free time, they really didn’t have a clue what to do with it. So how did they react? Gin. I’m all for a good glass of gin (don’t worry, I’m 21), but London spiraled into a gin-drinking binge; it was a flat-out drunken city. Now gin was not London’s problem, it was simply their coping mechanism for the real problem of a dramatic social change.
Now we’re not here to judge, because it seems that every generation seems to have some sort of revolutionary social change that we don’t quite know how to deal with. I’ll come back to this in a minute, but in the meantime, can you think of any social changes your generation has faced? What about mine (millenials)? Hold onto those ideas because we’re coming back to them. Anyways, America went through a similar social change to London after World War II. But instead of turning to the bottle, we turned to the tube. TV was our gin. Addicting, absorbent, and full of possibilities.
Now the cognitive surplus (remember this is a fancy way of saying free time) doesn’t mean or do anything by itself. It includes means, motive and opportunity. Did you ever play the murder-mystery game Clue? At the end of the game you would make your guess of who was the murderer, and it would sound something like this: I think it was Colonel Mustard, with the candlestick, in the ballroom. Well his means were his candlestick, his motive could’ve been money or power (it’s a game, okay), and the opportunity presented itself in the ballroom.
In my opinion, motive is a game changer. It’s your reason for doing something. Generally, motive falls into 2 distinct categories: doing something for interest (intrinsic) and doing something to reap a reward (extrinsic). Now I know what you’re thinking, gosh those reward people are so selfish. Well neither is better than the other. A reward could be as simple as recognition for a charitable donation. Josh Groban, the famous singer who makes you cry with his beautiful voice, has very charitable fans. His fans started an entire nonprofit in his honor, collecting donations and holding auctions. While these 3 girls who founded the notion had intrinsic motivations (it was just something they liked to do), they set up a thank you page for donors with extrinsic motivations. Hey, either way, the charity still got some money.
So remember when I was talking about social change and I said I’d come back to it. Well, I’m back. Social change is relevant in every generation. Something that is very relevant right now is the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on same sex marriage. If you haven’t heard about it (you live under a rock?) or want more details click here for NPR’s official report. Now I’m not here to spark political debate (although I fully support this decision), I am here to relate this back to gin and TV. You see, many people both in support of and not in support of this decision haven’t figured out how to cope with their shock, and thus they have taken to social media. There are posts of delight, and posts of hate, but either way, there are a lot of freakin posts out there. The problem isn’t the ruling, or people’s reactions to it though. Posting is people’s gin and TV; it’s their coping mechanism. The problem is that this is a serious social change and it took a lot of people by surprise and they haven’t figured out how to handle it. Can you think of any other recent events that may parallel the problem v. reaction method like posting, TV, and gin?
I hope you have a better understanding of the cognitive surplus, as well as how it plays into our past, present, and future. What I want to know from you is how do you spend your free time? What would you do if it was taken away? Do you think how free time is spent differs by generation? What about what kinds of motivations are behind the things you do? Recognition? Gratitude? A prize? General generosity? Sound off in the comments below!
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Pictures by Social Grace, Amazon, ABC News & Betty Knowles Blog
Facts by Clay Shirkey of Cognitive Surplus
Links by Urban Dictionary & NPR