Will Pate’s Blog - Tales from a Gen Y internet guy

The Social Surplus

Published on 01/05/08
by Will Pate

Clay Shirky is talking about the idea of a social surplus. At the start of the industrial revolution people spent a generation drunk on gin because they didn’t know what to do with the massive changes in society, since the end of WWII we’ve been watching sitcoms.

The transformation from rural to urban life was so sudden, and so wrenching, that the only thing society could do to manage was to drink itself into a stupor for a generation…And it wasn’t until society woke up from that collective bender that we actually started to get the institutional structures that we associate with the industrial revolution today.

Clay calculated that the time spent to create Wikipedia was about 100 million hours of human thought. That’s about about as much time as people in the US alone spend watching just commercials each weekend. So a slight change in how we use our cognitive surplus can have tremendous results.

It wasn’t until people started thinking of this as a vast civic surplus, one they could design for rather than just dissipate, that we started to get what we think of now as an industrial society.

I stopped watching TV (for the most part) and playing video games (entirely) a few months ago, and I feel like I’m undergoing a personal renaissance. I’m working harder than ever in my life on a project that just might change the startup industry. I’ve made leaps and bounds in the professional caliber of my work.

I’m actively studying Mideast geopolitics, Sinology, cultural anthropology, cognitive science, progressive hip hop, electoral mechanics, nanotechnology, startup business, dog psychology, alternative energy, biomimicry, mobile banking, quantum theory, third world economics, venture capital and transhumanism among other subjects. I’ve watched dozens of documentaries that have opened my world view and challenged my beliefs.

I’ve figured the first two books I want to write.

I’ve discovered a purpose and mission for that around the world trip I’ve always dreamed of taking.

Sounds crazy right? Well look at it in perspective.

Clay figured out that if the internet connected population of the US spent 1% less time watching TV, every year their collective cognitive surplus could create 100 projects the size of Wikipedia. Every year. Now your remote control is looking a little silly.

So what are you going to do with your piece of the social surplus?

That's it. What Next?

Please leave your comment so I know what you think about this article.