Television and The Cognitive Surplus

A few weeks back I finally pulled the plug on television. Since I don't own a television, this meant not visiting hulu.com any more. Since then I've noticed some extra time in my life that I'm not used to using, that has long been consumed by passive consumption.

Here Clay Shirky talks about the vast 'cognitive surplus' that our society has, the free time that we don't yet know what to do with and generally spend on things like television, and how social media like Wikipedia are beginning to tap into it.

My favorite stats from his talk: The entirety of Wikipedia represents about 100 million hours of human thought. Americans alone watch 200 BILLION hours of television per year. That's 200,000,000,000 hours. Or 2,000 Wikipedias per year.

If people spend 1% of that television time do something productive, that's 20 Wikipedias per year. And this year we're going to sprinkle in a WikiChoice.

(ht @gapingvoid)

The Haps

Just a quick update for those who would like it.

- I've been working with some friends to create WikiChoice.com, a platform for people to align their purchasing power with their deepest values. This thing has huge potential. We're just rolling out the first, skeletal iteration of the site. And we need your help. Hit the link above to check it out.

- There's a short piece of my writing up at the Ecclesia Collective site right now. It's a reflection on the American Christian church, and though it is critical, I hope readers will realize its "both-and" message and see it as an encouragement at least as much as a rebuke.

Anti-Consumerist Consumers

Simple Shoes, a for-profit company that sells shoes to consumers, just put out a manifesto against consumerism. In order to sell more shoes.

Are they sincere in their sentiments? Sure. But the duplicity is inescapable. You can't market against consumerism. So why do we as consumers buy in? I think it has to do with Social Object theory (a la Hugh Macleod). People need something physical to rally around; we need atoms to show and share and talk about. We need things to help us remember and to show others what we believe, who we are. And the only ones offering these Social Objects right now are consumer products companies.

Simple Shoes wants people who are sick of consumerism to buy Simple Shoes, and to show them to their friends as proof that they're sick of consumerism, so that their friends will buy Simple Shoes, too. It's not malicious, it's just mixed intentions -- you can't be an anti-consumerist consumer products company.

But anti-consumerism is important and needs a voice. It needs a Social Object for believers to rally around, to identify each other by and amplify the conversations. It needs something they don't have to buy. First thoughts on what this can be? An open source design, a distinctive icon, that can be made from things found in common household, no purchase necessary, easily disseminated through virtually free electronic media. People should be encouraged to make one for themselves, make many for their friends, have parties to make them, give them away freely.

Will be meeting with designers, artists, dreamers about this. Anyone want in?