Seth Godin recently directed his readers to what is a really wonderful speech delivered by a certain Mr. Clay Shirky, in which the speaker describes the way in which our old friend the sitcom masked the cognitive surplus available in our societies. You can watch the video at the end of this post, but for now, let’s deal with the transcript. Here’s Shirky:
Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened–rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before–free time.
And what did we do with that free time? Well, mostly we spent it watching TV.
We did that for decades. We watched I Love Lucy. We watched Gilligan’s Island. We watch Malcolm in the Middle. We watch Desperate Housewives. Desperate Housewives essentially functioned as a kind of cognitive heat sink, dissipating thinking that might otherwise have built up and caused society to overheat.
And it’s only now, as we’re waking up from that collective bender, that we’re starting to see the cognitive surplus as an asset rather than as a crisis. We’re seeing things being designed to take advantage of that surplus, to deploy it in ways more engaging than just having a TV in everybody’s basement.
Shirky goes on to elaborate on some of the projects which have been developed by people working without payment in their free time, including such examples as Wikipedia and a public map in Fortaleza, Brazil which tracks assaults, performing the essential service of informing citizens of possible safety issues.
Shirky’s idea is striking, but I especially like his conclusion: that people expect to be more than consumers these days–they expect to create, to partner, and to produce. He relates this enlightening story:
I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago, and one of them was talking about sitting with his four-year-old daughter watching a DVD. And in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. That seems like a cute moment. Maybe she’s going back there to see if Dora is really back there or whatever. But that wasn’t what she was doing. She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, “What you doing?” And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, “Looking for the mouse.”
Here’s something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here’s something four-year-olds know: Media that’s targeted at you but doesn’t include you may not be worth sitting still for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way change. Because four year olds, the people who are soaking most deeply in the current environment, who won’t have to go through the trauma that I have to go through of trying to unlearn a childhood spent watching Gilligan’s Island, they just assume that media includes consuming, producing and sharing.
I love the idea that we’re growing generations of consumers who just expect more from their entertainment. And the smart companies understand this shift. We’ve already spoken about how The Grammys have recognized that the way in which fans interact with their music and their favorite musicians has changed. But according to a recent Mashable article, The Grammys isn’t the only one getting into the act. MTV, according to the post, encouraged live chats for fans watching its show 16 and Pregnant. American Idol relies on the votes of millions of fans. NBA.com has created TV companion pages for live basketball games. In short, the word consumer is rapidly changing and may quickly become obsolete.
What are you doing to incorporate this shift to interactivity?
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