Another insightful Clay Shirky blog asks, "where's the mouse"

Last April, Clay Shirky gave a talk at the Web 2.0 conference. In his talk, he brought up the subject of surplus cognitive time; time we spend being cognitively passive, simply absorbing rather than processing and contributing. Like watching a sitcom, for example.

What has happened now, in the beginnings of the social software age, is that people are starting to use some of this surplus to contribute, to create, and share. Wikipedia was his cited example.

The discussion around this insight is very interesting, and the conclusion strong: in our search for ways of taking traditional media into the next millennium, look how we can turn each medium of passive consumption into one of contribution and sharing. In other words, ask this question: "Where's the mouse?".


Read Shirky's talk transcript here.