In today’s society, citizens need to rely on their right brained abilities more and more each day. The world is demanding more than ever for new creative designs incorporated into their daily lifestyle. Along with the pleasure of having a colorful and creative world around us, the right brained citizens are doing even more for the benefits of society. In a TED talk in June of 2010, Clay Shirky addressed the advantages of cognitive thinkers. Shirky believes in an idea called “cognitive surplus” where people share their creative ideas on the internet in their free time. This idea has grown to a point where people are now open sourcing for the good of society as a whole. This is also referred to as design for generosity. Many of the ideas for designs are results of extrinsic events that people then make creative to help society. Ideas ranging from a website called Ushahidi all the way to LOL cats are all proposals that go along with cognitive surplus. One of Clay Shirky’s most interesting points on cognitive thinking is the fact that even if a creative idea is bad, it is still utilizing a new way of thinking.
Clay Shirky’s techniques are almost identical to the ways of every other TED talk. Often times he will make light hearted jokes but for the majority of the time he is serious about everything he speaks on. He tells many captivating stories that keep the listeners engaged in his topic. His stories also help to prove key points about how important cognitive surplus is. He is very fluid with his speaking and knows his facts backwards and forwards. By accomplishing this, his thoughts flow naturally which makes him seem like an expert on his theories. Due to his ability to prove his intelligence, the audience understands him easily and agrees with what his ideas are. Although his techniques are very similar to those of other speakers, his presentation is still unique because of the way he utilizes his techniques.
Shirky’s presentation style was also much like those of other presenters. He explained his entire presentation with the help of a power point containing multiple slides to accentuate his points. However, his presentation did stand out due to his amount of evidence he incorporated. Shirky used a lot of graphs and pictures to help the audience understand his train of thought. The most accommodating aspect of his points were the graphs. When graphs were projected onto the screen, it showed how extreme results of some experiments were. Although his presentation did not especially stand out, he still did an excellent job of making his slides interesting and helpful.
There are several key points made in Clay Shirky’s presentation that are relevant to society today. I found that the most important point he makes is about communal design vs. civic design. Communal design would be ideas such as LOL cats. LOL cats have no benefit to society except for providing a good laugh every now and then. Although some people could argue that this is very beneficial to society, it is not making a difference in society for people who are not participating in the creation of LOL cats. Whereas in civic design, even if citizens are not contributing to the information being shared, they are still able to utilize these ideas to benefit themselves. An example of a civic design would be Ushahidi which has branched and is now being used all over the world. A key lesson involving both of these design ways is about using your right brain. Although LOL cats are not directly helping society in a way that Ushahidi is, they are both still encouraging expanding the abilities of cognitive thinking. This goes back to the idea that even if a creative idea is not great, it is still an attempt in using ones cognitive skills. The importance of practicing cognitive thinking is especially important to education today as well as me personally. Due to the fact that the world is becoming more right brained demanding, it is important that students in today’s education system begin to make use of their cognitive ways in preparation of the new right brained dominant world that stands before us. Each of Clay Shirky’s points help everyone gain a better understanding of why cognitive thinking is important and how it can be used in the world today.
Example of LOL Cat:
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