Book Review

Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age
by Clay Shirky
The Penguin Press, 2010

            During the early 18th Century, people in London drank a lot of gin. Consumption of the liquor grew rapidly as new residents arriving from the countryside used it as a cheap anesthetic to quell anxieties caused by the massive transformations of the industrial revolution. According to author Clay Shirky, this untidy transition from agrarian to urban society mirrors the transformation from an industrial to an information economy that has occurred over the last 50 years. During this transition, Shirky asserts, most people have not, however, turn to gin to calm their fears. The modern drug of choice has been television.

According to Shirky the information revolution that began after World War II ushered in an unprecedented amount of free time in the lives of individuals. Unfortunately, he suggests, until recently, this free time has been wasted on the boob tube. In the last few years, however, increasing numbers of individuals have shifted away from the television and onto the Internet. While the activities they find there may also be “wasted time” in the estimation of some, Shirky argues that these pursuits tend to be more interactive, more creative, more altruistic and, especially, more social than watching television. Shirky believes these aspects of emerging social media, combined with the huge number of people now connected to the Internet, have transformed the amassed free time of the world’s population into a cognitive surplus. This surplus, he argues, is a “social asset that can be harnessed for large, communally created projects, rather than as a set of individual minutes to be whiled away one person at a time” (p. 10).

            According to Shirky, channeling the cognitive surplus requires that people have the means, motives and opportunities to contribute to collective action. Computers, the Internet and Web 2.0 tools have provided the means and the opportunities by allowing cheap, fast communication among large networks of individuals and by facilitating the creation and sharing of content previously produced only by professionals. The motivations for such activities are, however, more complex. Citing a wide array of psychological research, Shirky argues that intrinsic motivators are more powerful than extrinsic ones when an individual is interested in the activity. Drawing on examples of successful uses of cognitive surplus, Shirky asserts that a combination of internal human desires for autonomy, competence, creativity, membership and sharing (aka generosity) propels individuals to communal action, and that it is the social motivations (membership and sharing) that may be the most powerful when it comes to voluntary efforts toward collaboration. Meanwhile, he argues, spirited competition between participants and a shared culture can enhance the outcomes of these endeavors.

These efforts aren’t without perils, however, as groups must always balance their goals with the needs of individual members, and striking this balance can be very difficult, according to Shirky. Still, he argues, through an “explosion of creative and generous behaviors… the world is becoming well provisioned with sources of value, value mainly created and captured by the participants” (p. 184). In order to harness the cognitive surplus to transform society - to create what he calls civic value - Shirky believes broad experimentation is necessary, and he provides a number of recommendations for doing so effectively.

Throughout the book, Shirky describes several real-world examples that have created civic value by harnessing free time using the types of motivations he describes. For example, the Grobanites for charity began as an effort by an online fan club to give singer Josh Groban a birthday gift, and has grown into an all-volunteer non-profit organization that raises tens of thousands of dollars for charity each year. Another group of young residents of Lahore, Pakistan, the Responsible Citizens, used Facebook to recruit their friends to clean up trash in their neighborhoods, eventually inspiring other area residents who witnessed their efforts to join in. Meanwhile, Nisha Susan created the Facebook group Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women to combat violence targeted against “modern” women by a group of Hindu extremists in India. The Facebook group’s efforts resulted in a good deal of publicity, and the local government, which had previously ignored the violence, took action to prevent future attacks.

A major strength of the book is these examples, since they provide evidence that online collaborative endeavors can create civic value, and they show consistently relevant anecdotal evidence to support his arguments. Shirky also uses these examples effectively. The main chapters of the book begin with in-depth descriptions of the real-world examples, and then segue into more formal arguments, though the style of these arguments is decidedly more accessible than a traditional academic paper. For example, he follows the Grobanites for Charity story with a discussion of the psychological research supporting his contention that intrinsic motivations may be more powerful than extrinsic motivations. This approach is effective for two reasons. First, it draws the reader into each chapter with a compelling and often entertaining story, and second, it allows him to refer back to the example during the formal argument to illustrate particular points without having to elaborate on the story itself. In this sense, the book is extremely well written.

Another clear strength of the book, especially from the standpoint of students of public administration, is that it provides practical advice for those individuals interested in trying to create civic value using Web 2.0 tools and strategies, though Shirky cautions that, “with social software, there are no foolproof recipes for success” (p. 193). While the suggestions are too numerous to list here, they provide sensible strategies based on the successes and failures of the pioneers of social media. One suggestion is to “start small” (p. 193). To illustrate what he means by “small,” Shirky uses the example of PickupPal, a free online service that connects drivers and riders interested in carpooling. If PickupPal had started by trying to facilitate connections across the country, it likely would have failed, because the first users might never have found a connection. By starting with one small city, however, PickupPal was able create initial success and expand outward once its reputation had spread outside the first city.

The most important aspect of this book, however, is likely Shirky’s discussion of the motivations for communal action. Most of us would agree that the Internet has clearly provided the means and the opportunity for more participatory endeavors. The argument that all humans are motivated more by intrinsic factors than by extrinsic factors when an activity is interesting might be a stretch, however, given that much of the psychological research used to back this claim is contested even within the psychological community. What is apparent from Shirky’s examples is that the number of people responding to such motivations appears to have grown substantially thanks to the Internet, and that such motivations are often an integral part of Internet collaborations that have created civic value.

It is likely that in some cases a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic factors may help motivate different individuals. For example, Shirky uses PickupPal as case study of social coordination. Clearly it is possible that some users of PickupPal want to carpool to reduce their carbon footprint, some may be primarily interested in saving money and others might use the service because they can’t drive due to an injury or a suspended license. Thus a number of intrinsic, economic and practical factors may be motivating users, and it is difficult to know which, if any, is the most important.

Still, Shirky’s focus on intrinsic motivators is very relevant for students of public administration. Too often the field focuses solely on extrinsic incentives such as economic rewards or sanctions, and ignores the potential of intrinsic motivations to shape behavior. But as Shirky’s examples show, pioneering Internet endeavors that have succeeded in creating civic value have often relied on these types of motivations among participants. Given this history, those individuals within public administration interested in using Web 2.0 tools and strategies to create civic value should certainly consider both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations when designing their endeavors.

References

Shirky, C. (2010). Cognitive surplus: Creativity and generosity in a connected age. New York, NY: The Penguin Press. Kindle edition.