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?

Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan is using a YouTube channel to engage in cross cultural dialog. Her first challenge is to break down stereotypes about the Arab world by calling on people to submit their own to her, which she will then answer.

“I want people to know the real Arab world. To see it unedited, unscripted and unfiltered. To see the personal side of my region. To know the places, and faces, and rituals, and culture that shape the part of the world I call home.”

I love seeing social media used for positive change, and I can’t think of a better one than more dialog between Westerners and Arabs. We have so much to learn about each other. It would be great to see someone do the flip side for the Arab world.

I remember passing a TV in Tanzania and cringing because it was just one gangster rap video after another. Violence, misogyny, crass materialism and drugs on repeat - just change up the guy getting the close ups every 4 minutes. It was disheartening to hear that those videos were the primary cultural lens on through which many people in Africa saw us. No wonder so many thought so poorly of us, or came to our side of the world and struggled to fit into our social norms.

It’s great that so many people all over the world now have satellite TV, but often it’s hard to cut through the noise and get a clear picture of what life is really like where those signals come from. And the internet is just a network of cables until we use it for good like Queen Rania is doing. Here’s hoping more people that want to change the world start adopting these tools that have so much potential.

As an internet-addicted millennial, I’m well aware that the printed word is dying. Our generation is going to be the death of printed magazines and newspapers. I haven’t read a newspaper in years, but thanks to Google News, Digg, Reddit, NowPublic and others; I’m still as informed as I was when I used to keep scrapbooks full of newspaper clippings.

But what I didn’t know is that books are already toast. Steve Jobs recently told the New York Times his opinion on Amazon’s Kindle electronic book reader.

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

Ouch.

Truth is, I’ve been thinking about writing a book this year. I was approached by a publisher last year, did the prep work, and they pulled out after they found another author that had already written a book on a similar subject. After that experience I was thinking of self publishing in print or an ebook. Now I’m wondering if I shouldn’t record video and sell DVDs instead.

My experience on commandN has really convinced me that video is the most compelling medium. I’ve often wondered when writing on my blog, why I don’t just turn on the webcam that comes built into my computer, and tell you what I’m thinking instead. I’ve been a writer for over a decade, and a blogger for 9 years. But I’m starting to wonder: if no one is reading books anymore, then how long until we don’t read at all anymore? When does recording and playing video become such a commodity that the printed word becomes a novelty? Good or bad, I think that day is coming soon. My early adopter gene tells me I need to switch my style up to stay ahead of the curve.

A little late notice, I’ll be speaking tomorrow at nextMEDIA: Monetizing Digital Media about guerilla marketing tactics for online publishers.

This is my first time speaking at a conference that I didn’t help organize (like Blogs and Dogs) or one of the audience driven “unconferences” like a Barcamp, Democamp or Casecamp. Thanks to Mark Greenspan for inviting me to come, I really wanted to be at his last conference in Banff. A few of my friends did too and they even made a video about missing me - those crazy cats

If I get any audio or video of the presentation, I’ll share it here later.