Understanding is the Essence of Intelligence

Where do people find the time to contribute to Wikipedia and Open-Source?

"No one who works in TV gets to ask this question", says Clay Shirky in his brilliant speech at O’Reilly Media’s Web 2.0 Expo.

According to Clay, the time comes from the Cognitive Surplus TV has been masking for 50 years and Wikipedia would represent about a 100 million hours of thought while TV watching is 200 billion hours in the US alone every year, or 2,000 wikipedia projects wasted every year watching television, or one Wikipedia project wasted every weekend just watching adds. Clay also teaches us that 4-year-olds now knows that a screen that ships without a mouse ships broken.

The Internet revolution is just beginning and the amount of cognitive surplus put to work is growing every day world-wide. People now want to use their cognitive power to empower themselves and give new meaning to their lives rather than giving it away to adds, sitcoms or gin. This shift is redefining everything we know in unpredictable ways.