I recently watched a talk my Clay Shirky on his new book "Here Comes Everybody". In his talk he argues that automation developed in the 20th century has led to more free time than ever before and this was highly traumatic for our culture. The initial result of this was complete confusion as to what to do with this time, people eventually turned toward television as a use for the massive 'cognitive surplus' that had been created. The development of interactive media now means that this immense human potential can be harnessed to create projects like Wikipedia.

He tells a particularly good anecdote about an interview he had with a television producer. The television producer sneers at people who contribute to projects like Wikipedia saying "where do people find the time?" and he replies...

"No one who works in TV gets to ask that question. You know where the time comes from. It comes from the cognitive surplus you've been masking for 50 years."

I suppose this blog is a manifestation of my cognitive surplus, Clay's talk has made me find slightly better about this whole thing, hopefully it's worthwhile...

http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=5885