Mitä yhteistä on 1700-luvun teollisella vallankumouksella ja televisiolla? Yhteinen nimittäjä on “cognitive surplus”. Ei ole löytynyt vielä käännöstä termille – käsitteen lanseerasi Clay Shirky jo reilu vuosi sitten, ja paremman käännöksen puuttuessa voitaneen puhua ylijäämätajunnasta. Lyhyesti mistä on kysymys: Teollinen vallankumous ja sen myötä kaupungistuminen tuli päälle kuin höyryjuna. Ihmisillä oli yhtäkkiä aikaa käsissään ja elämä mullistunut, niinpä paremman puutteessa ginistä haettiin apua selviämiseen.
And it wasn’t until society woke up from that collective bender that we actually started to get the institutional structures that we associate with the industrial revolution today. Things like public libraries and museums, increasingly broad education for children, elected leaders–a lot of things we like–didn’t happen until having all of those people together stopped seeming like a crisis and started seeming like an asset.
Ginin virkaa toimitti viime vuosisadan puolivälistä alkaen televisio ja sen tarjoama puudute, kun yhteiskunnallinen muutos sai kokonaan uuden vaihteen toisen maailmansodan jälkeen. Näin Clay:
If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would’ve come off the whole enterprise, I’d say it was the sitcom. 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.
Ja kuinka paljon: Clayn mukaan amerikkalaiset kuluttavat TV:n ääressä yhtä paljon aikaa kuin pantaisiin 2000:een Wikipediaan vuodessa. Hänen pointtinsa onkin että olemme pikkuhiljaa selviämässä TV:n krapulasta sosiaalisen median avulla. Vihdoinkin meillä on työkaluja, joilla päästään osallistumaan pelkän kuluttamisen sijasta. Esimerkiksi:
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.”
Hmm. Dennis Hancock on tosin pessimistisempi:
These people do use social media during their “down time” though. But as I informally survey them, a lot of the activity is closer to the passive, “wasting time” side of the fence that’s not that dissimilar from watching TV. But instead of fully developed stories and plot lines, it’s often sifting through a collection of short messages, silly games, and the like. And it leaves me wondering whether how many of us use or “cognitive surplus” is really going to change, and if so whether it will end up being for the better.
