Cognitively Nonplussed

And so, with the lightning reactions for which I entirely anonymous around the globe, it is time to turn a beady eye upon Clay Shirky’s notion of ‘cognitive surplus’. You can watch a video of him explaining this here, and read a rough transcript of same here. Our own Shona Ghosh reported from Shirky’s London talk last week. Basically, though, the idea is that there has existed, at various points in history (including this one), an excess of mental energy, the surplus nature of which demands certain technologies to exhaust it.

For example, Shirky rather cutely argues that the most important form of technology in the early phase of the industrial revolution was gin. Yes, gin. Such was the emotionally wrenching upheaval of the rural-to-urban shift that there was no better way of coping with the anguish than drinking oneself into Hogarthian insensibility. It was only a generation later that society began to reorganise itself along the broadly civic lines we recognise today (public health, education for all, democratic governance), thereby dealing with the ‘cognitive surplus’ – giving people something to do other than drink.

He goes on to suggest that a new cognitive surplus emerged in the post- World War II period, arising this time not from new industrial social relations, but from the leisure time that the re-appraisal of those relations had wrought, notably the 9-5 work day and the weekend. Suddenly, people had free time and, argues Shirky, they had no clue what to do with it. Society needed a new gin to deal with its cognitive surplus, and lo, that gin was television, in particular the sitcom. Thus is I Love Lucy rendered very much the Mother’s Ruin of 1950s America.

I will pause here, briefly, that professional historians, or indeed anyone reading this whilst in possession of a functioning knowledge of the past, might apply the recommended cold compress.

Shirky argues that we are still experiencing cognitive surplus, but that today the technologies that have emerged to deal with that surplus are far more benign than gin and television. Those technologies are, of course, the social technologies that we all know and love: wikis, blogs, forums and the like. Shirky argues for the benignity of such in comparison to gin and TV by dint of their innate requirement that users participate actively, rather than passively. One merely watches a sitcom, for example, but one must actually think, write and create in order to edit a wikipedia page, or contribute to a blog, or just leave a note on a Facebook page.

This, then, is Shirky’s brave new world, one in which our cognitive surplus is harnessed to create fantastically useful, empowering things such as wikipedia, or to create silly, funny, enjoyable things like LOLcats. This world is, to Shirky, an infinite improvement on previous ways of dealing with cognitive surplus – participatory production outdoes passive consumption every time. He points to grassroots political organisations, fundraising, localised collaborations and so forth to make his point, rolling out a roster of social media feel-goods familar to anyone in the industry who has ever felt the need to defend it against accusations of rampant cretin-enabling.

Shirky’s media appearances, and the accompanying book, have been given a generally positive reception, minus the occasional cavil about the value of creating a LOLcat in comparison to watching an episode of a top quality TV show (The Wire, inevitably). Even those who are a tad put out by what one might charitably describe as Shirky’s broadbrush approach to history, acknowledge that ‘cognitive surplus’ is a Very Important Idea which requires Due Attention.

Alas, what no-one yet seems to have acknowledged is that the lavishing of due attention upon ‘cognitive surplus’ is itself no more than a way of exhausting said surplus. That is to say that Clay Shirky and his ‘cognitive surplus’ travelling gang show are exactly a technology with which cognitive surplus can be dealt. The more one ponders ‘cognitive surplus’, the less surplus cognition one has. This blogpost is a self-undermining example of that  very point.

However, if one pays just a little bit more Due Attention to the Very Important Idea which is ‘cognitive surplus’, it becomes increasingly obvious not that Shirky is wrong or anything so vulgar as that, but that he is asking the wrong question. Shirky’s inquiry is focused upon how cognitive surpluses are exhausted by new technologies (gin, sitcoms, wikipedia) and, to a lesser extent, how such surplusses emerge to begin with. He then contrasts the interactivity of the most recent surplus-exhausting technology (social media) with its antecedents in order to illustrate its superiority and to promulgate an optimistic vision of the collaorative, social future.

All of which is fair enough if, as noted, his historical detial is a little wanting (the idea that all people ever did with their postwar leisure time was watch TV is so dead wrong it’s almost funny).

However, asking how cognitive surpluses are dealt with entirely misses the potentially more interesting question of why cognitive surpluses have to be dealt with. What, one might reasonably ask, is so bad about people thinking more than society currently requires?

One answer, of course, is that ‘cognitive surplus’ is a clear and present danger to current social forms of organisation. People with time on their hands start to ask questions about the world in which they live. The phrase ‘the devil makes work for idle hands’ is not an imprecation against laziness, it’s a verbalization of the fear that those at the top of a social hierarchy feel when confronted with the possibility of those at the bottom not being busy enough not to ask questions. Gin and TV give idle hands something to do, and put restless minds at ease.

Shirky, I think, would argue, that social media differs as a surplus-exhauster because it encourages rather than deadens thought. The predictable rejoinder to this is ‘have you read any YouTube comments recently, Clay?’, but simply pointing out how very very stupid much of social media is does not really constitute an engagement with Shirky’s broader optimism – that the energy put into, say the LOLcat bible, could be used to create something socially useful (see his advocacy of healthcare social media such as PatientsLikeMe in Shona’s post).

A more interesting rejoinder to Shirky’s optimism would, I think, be to ask not how social media, like gin and TV, may distract us from examining the problems and injustices of extant social relations, but how increasing use of social media may, like gin and TV, serve extant social relations. As Charles Leadbetter notes in his NS review of Shirky’s book, ‘There are curiously few capitalists in (his) story.’

It’s simply super that I can now collaborate with complete acquaintances to review restaurants via the OpenTable app on my iPhone – the same iPhone the profits from which Apple corp can now, thanks to the US supreme court’s recent ruling, spend as much as they like on influencing US political races. Sure, I could use social media to organise a political movement against said ruling, to encourage politicians to pass a new law – but I’d be using my Verizon wireless account to do so, and well, they can spend the money I give them on political influence, too.

The thing is, perhaps, that the technologies which are used to exhaust cognitive surplus are never inherently bad or good, and Shirky’s broadbrush approach alas encourages that sort of manichean thinking: TV bad, social media good.

‘Cognitive Surplus’ is indeed a Very Important Idea, but it would be more useful one if its was used to interrogate not whether or not the technologies which exhaust it are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ according to some calculus of interactivity, but whether or not those technologies serve or undermine existing social relations.