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The one-sentence summary

More and more people are using their free time to become involved in active participation.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• In the post-industrial world, there has been a huge increase in the number of people paid to think and talk, rather than to produce or transport objects.
• We now have free time on a scale like never before, but for most of the second half of the last century, most people just used it to watch TV.
• TV viewing is now in decline for the first time, and the world is beginning to use the Cognitive Surplus generated by free time to become involved in active participation rather than passive consumption.
• Subtitled ‘Creativity and generosity in a connected age’, the book uses a mixture of example, analysis and social theory to suggest why a new generation is making choices that contribute to a greater whole.
• We now have the means, motive and opportunity to experiment with ideas at almost no cost, and on a huge base of potential users. Tapping this surplus benefits everybody.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• The cognitive surplus, newly forged from previously disconnected islands of time and talent, is just raw material. To get any value out of it, we have to make it mean or do things.
• Old logic is television logic. TV audiences didn’t create any real value for each other. In fact, TV raises material aspirations and anxiety. We need to rethink our concept of media – it’s not something we consume, it’s something we use.
• The internet succumbs to post-Gutenberg economics. No one in particular owns it, and everyone can use it.
• There are three types of group production:

1. Private sector: a group does something for less than its selling price

2. Public sector: obliged to work together on something of perceived high value

3. Social: value creation without price signals and managerial oversight

• People are ‘hopelessly committed’ both to being individual and collective. In chemistry, bonding atoms have valence. In social production, contributors need a ‘positive normative or ethical valence toward the process’.
• Some suggestions for harnessing the cognitive surplus:
• Starting: start small; ask why?; behaviour follows opportunity; default to social
• Growing: 100 users are harder than 12 and 1000; people differ, more people differ more; intimacy doesn’t scale; support a supportive culture
• Adapting: the faster you learn, the sooner you’ll be able to adapt; success causes more problems than failure; clarity is violence; try anything, try everything

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

It’s a great idea but it could have been expressed in an essay rather than a book.

The one-sentence summary

If you want a truly interesting creative idea, try asking the audience that cares about it most.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• For the first time we have the tools to make group action a reality, and they’re going to change the world. The book has a number of main tenets:
• Sharing anchors communities
• Everyone is now a media outlet – they can publish, then filter
• Personal motivation leads to collaborative production
• Collective action creates institutional challenges
• Everything is getting faster and faster
• Failure now costs nothing (most ideas are bad, but it is now cheaper to try something)
• Management challenges grow faster than organisational size, so more is different.
• Sending an email is now a kind of publishing, which has the power to bring down companies.
• In answer to those who claim that much on the Internet is unedited rubbish, much of what gets posted is in public, but not for the public.
• We used to do little things for love, and big things for money – now we can do big things for love.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• The Birthday Paradox shows that we have a poor grasp of probability. What are the chances of 2 people in a group of 36 sharing a birthday? You’d think it would be 36 divided by 365 days, yielding 1 in 10, but there are actually 600 possible pairs of birthdays in a group of 36 (80% chance).
• Most of the barriers to group action have now collapsed. So have transaction costs, which throws the original work of Ronald Coase (see Wikinomics) into confusion.
• The Tragedy of the Commons is where each shepherd can see that all would benefit from restraint (not overgrazing), the odds are against it because the whole arrangement falls apart if just one person is selfish.
• Social awareness has three levels:

When everybody knows something

When everybody knows that everybody knows

When everybody knows that everybody knows that everybody knows

• The fitness landscape is a metaphorical area in which, for any problem or goal, there is a vast array of possibilities to explore but only a few valuable spots to discover. Companies tend to stick with the early, obvious ones.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• It is fairly long and detailed so you have to dig hard for the nuggets.
• Much of the material echoes the contents of Wikinomics.