Clay Shirky’s TED Talk was impressive, and part of this was because of the techniques he used. First, I thought it was so good how he found a perfect example of cognitive surplus in action, which was Ushahidi. I personally think these specific examples enhanced his Talk because it proves that what he’s saying is happening. This is also contrary to Sir Ken Robinson, who gave specific stories, but you couldn’t really prove these stories. But with Ushahidi, you can go on the Ushahidi website, and they also even have a Wikipedia article (also open source) that talks about its history.
I honestly thought that this was an amazing TED Talk, with a simple message that really relates to the whole world. This message is that people all over the world have over a trillion hours of free time a year, and that this free time should go to volunteering, contributing, and collaborating on large, even global projects (aka. cognitive surplus). If people actually listened to his message, and follow through with it, then the world would be a better place. People could devote an hour, just a small hour every day, or even every week to work on important things. The key to making this work though, would be motivation, not with rewards, but with emotions. This ties along with Wikipedia, which was created by volunteers and, is an important project that benefits the world. People contributed to Wikipedia because THEY WANTED TO. The volunteers wanted to help the world because to them, it is fun. They spent their free time having fun, while working on a large project too. If this could be applied to other programs, where people want to help out to have fun, then his cognitive surplus ideas would be successful.
For more on Shirky's ideas view this article.
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