Cognitive Surplus
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Trade in Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Plus, get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
Lucid and assured ... the most amazing fact about Shirky's incisive manual for building a better world is this: it's just possible that everything he promises may be true (Guardian )
Shirky is the best chronicler we have of the unfolding cultural revolution brought on by the web (New Statesman )
Shirky is the best chronicler we have of the unfolding cultural revolution brought on by the web (New Statesman )
Product Description
In the past, we filled our free time with the tools at our disposal. Television became a kind of universal part-time job, and sitcoms and soap operas sponged up our cognitive surplus: the collective surfeit of time, intellect and energy at our disposal.
Today, tech has finally caught up with human potential. New tools don't just let us consume, but to create and to share. Clay Shirky's groundbreaking book reveals what is now happening with this previously untapped talent and goodwill. From lolcats to tools for tracking voter fraud and ethnic violence, he shows how we're using our cognitive surplus for the better, and what it means for the future.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
Shirky's theme is that many of the social and even private behaviours which we take for granted as 'human nature' are in fact adaptations to information restrictions or costs. And those restrictions are now gone! His conclusion is that we now have the opportunity to restructure our society, our conception of the state, and actually, our conception of our own potentialities. A rare argument for rational optimism, and a call to action. Bravo!
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I decided to read this book as it was recommended by a fellow web professional as a must read for people in our field. He was right on as there are so many books available on the subject, it can get confusing.
It's not a how to guide to social media - more of a philosophy about the digital age. I gained loads of insights and so will you, hence me writing this review so that I am social networking the good word!
It also made me stop and think about my 'free time' and how I choose to use it.
It's not a how to guide to social media - more of a philosophy about the digital age. I gained loads of insights and so will you, hence me writing this review so that I am social networking the good word!
It also made me stop and think about my 'free time' and how I choose to use it.
Format:Paperback
Like the equally excellent "Here Comes Everybody" (HCE) by the same author, this is about social media. In HCE he concentrated on how social media is empowering people in ways that are both challenging to corporate and government power, and liberating the forward thinking companies who are ready and able to embrace this.
Cognitive Surplus picks up from where HCE left off, and discusses how we can use the power to "do good" that has been released due to have more leisure time in modern culture. Just like social media has empowered people to challenge centralised authority (HCE) so it has freed us to be more effective in our altruism. The sub title says it all "creativity and generosity in a connected age".
The book surveys the enabling factors (means, motive and opportunity), showing how social media powerfully adds in each of these areas, and also looks at culture, community and individualism (and the tensions therein). Finally Shirky deals with how this has come to pervade modern life and culture and how it's changing us.
Perhaps one omission is that he doesn't deal very much with the negative side - social media can be an equally pwerful tool in the hands of those less altruistic: cyber-bullying, paedophilia, etc., being at the darker end of the spectrum.
As ever Shirky is always readable, well researched and challenging. This is a "must read" for anyone interested in social media.
Cognitive Surplus picks up from where HCE left off, and discusses how we can use the power to "do good" that has been released due to have more leisure time in modern culture. Just like social media has empowered people to challenge centralised authority (HCE) so it has freed us to be more effective in our altruism. The sub title says it all "creativity and generosity in a connected age".
The book surveys the enabling factors (means, motive and opportunity), showing how social media powerfully adds in each of these areas, and also looks at culture, community and individualism (and the tensions therein). Finally Shirky deals with how this has come to pervade modern life and culture and how it's changing us.
Perhaps one omission is that he doesn't deal very much with the negative side - social media can be an equally pwerful tool in the hands of those less altruistic: cyber-bullying, paedophilia, etc., being at the darker end of the spectrum.
As ever Shirky is always readable, well researched and challenging. This is a "must read" for anyone interested in social media.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
