For this reading reflection, I chose to read Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky. The main theme of this book is how people use their free time (their "cognitive surplus"), and how it has evolved over time to what it is today. He goes into detail about how people are increasingly using this time for collaboration on social media platforms using creativity and such rather than simply doing pointless tasks during this time. He talks about how social media can actually advance society because people are able to make waves with this sort of mass collaboration. The book connected with what I am learning in this class because it showed the importance of working together in this day and age and how it has been shown to make tangible changes through social media. This connects a lot with the networking aspect of this class and the entrepreneurial skills involved with that. He discusses how means, motive, opportunity, and culture all come together to engage in this cognitive surplus.
If I had to design an exercise for this class based on this book, I would create an experimental exercise where each person posts an electronic petition for their school, local government, state government, etc. that requests a certain change be made to benefit the stakeholders of that decision. By posting this and gaining signatures, it would show students how social media collaboration can quickly make societal changes or even just bring awareness to something that had not gotten enough attention prior. I was most surprised by how much Shirky praised social media in this context. Many books and writings praise social media for reasons like it allows businesses to promote themselves cheaper and easier, but this book praised it for what individuals do on social media in their free time. It was a different perspective and I definitely agreed with it, as we have all learned that the world is "shrinking" because of social media.
Hey McKenna! I think the book you read offered a really unique perspective that is not often spoken about in society. Oftentimes, social media is spoken about as such a time wasting distraction for millennials, but it seems that Clay Shirky believes that it is more productive than doing pointless tasks. I believe that social media can advance society, but that many individuals do not use it this way.
ReplyDeleteMckenna, the book you choose to read sounds like the hidden gem within the options we could have chose from. I really like the idea of how the book is based around how people use their spare time(cognitive surplus). Seems to show the perspectives of many people in deciding what they want to do in their spare time. I really liked the experimental process you can up with to test to test the power of social media. Great post overall!
ReplyDeleteHi Mckenna, I find this book extremely relevant to this class and the entrepreneurial mindset. At first I would think there is better uses of cognitive surpluses than on social media. However, being able to use social media to create change is a great example of how social media is indeed a good use of cognitive surpluses. I think your hypothetical exercise would be effective since the end goal is to see a tangible affect.
ReplyDelete