Jonathan Gronli

LIS753: Internet Fundamentals & Design

Troy Swanson

Cognitive Surplus and Libraries

Technological innovation comes with its benefits and drawbacks. To a certain extent

that’s what’s at the crux of Cognitive Surplus. Examining the way that the cognitive surplus has

been built and how it can be utilized is the general design of some of Clay Shirky’s major works

and lectures. It’s also an aspect of society that can be of great use in the modern library.

The point in history that Shirky starts with, just to show how different technological

evolutions and revolutions cause change, is the Industrial Revolution. As we know,

“Industrialization didn’t just create new ways of working, it created new ways of living, because

the relocation of the population destroyed ancient habits common to country living, while

drawing so many people together that the new density of the population broke the older urban

models as well” (Clay Shirky, 2010, p. 8). This is a given statement. Shifts in the work

environment mixed with the successes of the labor movements at different historical periods

allowed for unprecedented levels of free time that people could fill as they will. That’s where

one of the aspects of cognitive surplus comes into play.

The core of the resource of cognitive surplus lies in the mixture of the labor movement’s

successes leading to an eight-hour work week mixed with longer lifespans and the invention of

passively consumed media like television. The more media that’s passively consumed, the

higher the cognitive surplus. Since television became a mix of both a social lubricant and social

surrogacy, the television revolution had its own media as its equivalent to the Industrial

Revolution’s gin. That is also where a lot of the conflict regarding cognitive surplus revolves.

When a revolution’s own medium is also its drug, so to speak, the CEOs will work hard to
maintain or even increase the monopoly on free time. In an anecdote Shirky gives about a

conversation he had with a television producer, he brought up Wikipedia, and an argument

ensued after the producer asked where people find the time to do things like contribute. The

point of the anecdote is to bring up the issue of free time and make a larger point regarding the

television monopoly. “Suppose we consider the total amount of time people have spent on it as

a kind of unit – every edit made to every article, and every argument about those edits, for

every language that Wikipedia exists in. That would represent something like one hundred

million hours of human thought, back when I was talking to the TV producer” (p.14). While one

hundred million hours of collective time is a lot of time spent in regards to producing, sharing,

and debating knowledge, the number of hours spent on Wikipedia at the time pales in

comparison to the amount of time that Americans alone spend watching TV, cited to be about

two hundred billion hours.

The complicating factor to our media tools now is the fact that a lot of the new media

tools offers a much more active approach to media.

A whole generation had grown up with personal technology, from the portable
radio through the PC, so it was natural to expect them to put the new media
tools to personal use as well. But the use of a social technology is much less
determined by the tool itself; when we use a network, the most important asset
we get is access to one another. We want to be connected to one another, a
desire that the social surrogate of television deflect, but one that our use of
social media actually engages. (p. 17)

The shift toward social media is something that’s new and is challenging previous concepts of

production. It’s also challenged the individual relationships with the government as well. One of

Shirky’s favorite examples is a service called Ushahidi. In December 2007, a disputed election in

Kenya led to both ethnic violence and a government ban on the mainstream media covering the
ethnic violence. News regarding the ethnic violence came out of the political blog of Ory

Okolloh, who also encouraged her readers to email or post comments regarding the violence

they were seeing. What started as emails to and comments on her Kenyan Pundit blog, became

the Ushahidi service. Ushahidi was devised to aggregate the reports of local ethnic violence

across Kenya. It was a service that took advantage of the dispersed knowledge of people across

the country and gained enough international interest that Harvard’s School of Government

found that the service was better across multiple metrics, including reporting acts of violence as

they happened, reporting nonfatal violence, and reporting over a wide are.

While there are great civic value projects like Ushahidi, there are admittedly low culture

works like lolcats that factor in due to the use of the new media technology and practices. And

both the technology and practices end up getting pushback from modern traditional media.

Part of the pushback stems from a lack of knowledge of the history of innovation. Namely, one

of the things that often happens right away is the novelty of new technology kicks in and

people find fun uses before they return to serious uses. A common Shirky example is that of the

moveable type printing press, which had the bible published followed by erotica and similar

works for decades before considering printing things of civic value. The pushback also stems

from a lack of understanding in participatory culture, which is central to the study of cognitive

surplus.

The atomization of social life in the twentieth century left us so far removed
from participatory culture that we it came back, we needed the phrase
“participatory culture” to describe it. Before the twentieth century, we really
didn’t have a phrase for participatory culture; in fact, it would’ve been
something of a tautology. A significant chunk of culture was participatory – local
gatherings, events, and performances – because where else could culture come
from? The simple act of creating something with others in mind and then sharing
it with them represents, at the very least, an echo of that older model of culture,
 now in technological raiment. Once you accept the idea that we actually like
making and sharing things, however dopey in content or poor in execution, and
that making one another laugh is a different kind of activity from being made to
laugh by people paid to make us laugh, then in some ways the Cartoon Network
is a low-grade substitute for lolcats. (p.21)

The participatory element is what is key and important for this cognitive surplus. Cognitive

surplus is only potential. Without the participation, it remains only potential and is ultimately

meaningless. With all of this in mind, it’s important to look at the ways that libraries and other

organizations can utilize this cognitive surplus to greater effect. First, an argument can be made

that the essence of participation and communication that cognitive surplus takes advantage of

stems out of both the technological evolution as well as the evolution of games. One of the

thought processes regarding games that has been very influential in game design and getting

people to build communities and outreach is an old idea. At least within the realm of computer

technology, the design philosophy goes back to at least the original iteration of The Legend of

Zelda. Shigeru Miyamoto’s expressed philosophy was one that revolved around getting people

to reach out to each other to understand the game. During a 2007 Game Developers

Conference, Miyamoto gave the insight into his design philosophy.

Some people view Zelda as [lacking a communicative component], but when I

created it, I had a different idea in mind. Some people think that this single play
game is one where you communicate only with the computer, but from the start
I thought that Zelda could create a different kind of communication, centered
around the game itself. And when I first showed an early prototype version of
the NES version of Zelda, it did not go over well in Japan. People were confused.
They didn’t know their objective. They didn’t know how to move from stage to
stage. They couldn’t even solve the puzzles. And a lot of people said well look,
why don’t you just make one way through the dungeon—no multiple paths. But
of course I ignored them all. Rather than making it easier for players to
understand, I decide to take their sword away from the very beginning. You do
that then you know what you have to do. See, I did this because I wanted to
challenge them to find that sword, because I knew that they would think about
these problems. They would think before they go to sleep how am I going to do
 this? Or maybe as they’re riding to work in the morning. And at the same time, I
wanted them to talk with other Zelda players and exchange information, ask
each other questions, find out where to go next, exchange information—that’s
what happened. This communication was not a competition; but it was a real life
collaboration that helped make the game more popular. (S. Miyamoto, GDC,
2007)

This design philosophy is one that has affected not only the future design of many other games

trying to emulate success of the Zelda games. It has been also been used to influence

technology. Lastly, a game designer used some of the philosophy for communication and good

to develop an AR game for the New York Public Library. In 2011, Jane McGonigal devised a

game that would take place in the NYPL to celebrate its 100th anniversary. 500 players would be

broken into teams of eight and be let into the stacks to find and complete quests, at least four

completed quests per team including the writing prompts linked to each quest. By the end of

the night, all 500 players had contributed to a personalized book that has been included in the

NYPL rare books collection.

There is another reason why game design is being brought up is the fact that there are

multiple affordable, if not, free game development tools currently out in the market. Unity3d

offers free licenses to those who want to use the engine to either learn or do non-commercial

independent works. If the need arises, the only thing that users going through educational or

non-commercial use of the engine need to spend money on are assets. Both Unreal and

CryEngine both offer their engines free to download and royalty-free as well. All three also have

free documentation, tutorials, and guides on how to develop games as well. There are also

affordable or even free open-source tools to create assets with. The Entertainment Software

Association showed in a survey that 63% of American households have at least one person in

the household who regularly games, which they define as playing at least three hours of video
games per week. Many of those gamers create modifications or want to learn how to develop

games themselves. Those three engines, coupled with outreach to local game development

companies and other artistic software, can lead to interesting workshopping opportunities that

would further foster the growth of the participatory culture.

While this is only one example, due to funding and technological constraints, such

measures aren’t always feasible. This makes figuring out how to utilize the existing technology

and the interconnected social media of web 2.0 to really make use of the sheer potential that

exists. After all, Shirky admits that the cognitive surplus as a resource is only potential. If it is

not used in some way, it means and does nothing (Shirky, p.27). This requires thinking about a

lot of different things, from what the Web 2.0 movement is and what a Library 2.0 is. We also

need to consider the various rights issues that come up with the creativity and interconnectivity

that comes with the Web 2.0 movement. While the original concept of the web put a lot of the

creativity within the more typical models of media production that relied predominantly on

experts and professionals. Web 2.0 had a shift more toward user-generated content.

Applications are designed with the express intent of user interaction and creation. Collective

wisdom and community vetting dictates part of the cultural creation rather than centralized

authorities. The architecture itself encourages and facilitates the user participation. There are

multiple other aspects, but these are the biggest sources. Much like Web 2.0 uses a variety of

existing technologies in new ways to facilitate the creativity, Library 2.0 is based on using

existing social technologies in different ways. (Deodato, 2014, p. 742).

To put it another way, the library would have to operate as an open platform. David

Weinberger listed four thoughts as to what a library as platform would entail, saying that it
boils down to four things. It must be open to all, which is already a common philosophy within

at least public libraries. It must give access to every single scrap of information it has in all

forms, which, partially ties into thoughts on the social element of what libraries can do to both

connect its patron base and connect with their patron base. It must enable new products and

services to be built by anyone with an idea, which you can see in any library that has built a

makerspace and/or computer labs within them. Lastly, it must integrate everything the library

knows into the Net ecosystem (Weinberger, 2012). In those four points, there are areas where

the library can use improvement. However, there are areas where libraries are either proficient

or rapidly improving. The philosophy of open access is central to public libraries. Interlibrary

loan as well as eBook and audiobook availability along with multiple databases being integrated

into libraries helps with at least giving some access to more of what’s available through

libraries. Makerspaces and computer/media labs helps with the creation of new products and

services created by anyone with an idea. Many libraries currently have a social media presence

to promote content and services as well, while some libraries actively integrate with services

like Goodreads to allow things like user reviews.

The values brought up in viewing and treating the library like a platform were echoed in

Salzburg, Austria. And the problem being addressed while the Salzburg Curriculum was being

devised was specifically the issues that both Shirky and Weinberger talked about in their

respective works. How do we adequately train our library and museum professionals to work

with the participatory culture that makes use of this cognitive surplus? A working group trying

to devise the curriculum first laid out the key values to participatory culture: openness and

transparency, self-reflection, collaboration, service, empathy and respect, continuous

learning/striving for excellence, and creativity and imagination (Lankes, Stephens, & Arjona,

2015, p. S63). These values are central to other critics studying both literacy and participatory

culture. However, some of the lessons that came out of the Salzburg Curriculum, beyond just

the values, can be applied in other areas and have been spread outward by Lankes.

As the new tools allow for shifts in methodology for outreach, activism, creativity, and

collaboration, some key areas that LIS and museum professionals need to be trained in, per the

curriculum, are: transformative social engagement, technology, management for participation,

asset management, cultural skills, and knowledge/learning/motivation (p. S64). Transformative

social engagement means activism, social responsibility, critical social analysis, advocacy, and

understanding community needs. Technology, due to the rapid evolution of technology, is

spelled out in more the big picture ideas of crowdsourcing/outreach, the ability to engage and

evolve with technology, ability to impart technology skills to others, and creating and

maintaining an effective virtual presence. Management of participation, which seems a strange

topic for participatory culture, is focused more toward ensuring that the organizational

infrastructure of a library or museum are and remain in place to foster participation. This

includes institutional sustainability, advocacy for the institution, economics, ethics and values,

understanding the good of sharing as well as what can block it, collaboration within

interdisciplinary teams, and an understanding of assessment, analytics, and impact. Asset

Management deals with preservation and safeguarding, collection, and organization of

materials. Cultural Skills deals with communication, micro and macro-level cultural knowledge,

languages and terminology, and support for multiple literacies. Knowledge, Learning, and

Innovation focuses on multiple things as well, but they boil down to the construction of
knowledge, improvisation or innovation, interpretation, dissemination, and information. In

total, the Salzburg Curriculum demands an open and adaptable mind that is always willing to

work with, advocate for, and understand the organization and the community(ies) served by it

(S64-S66).

Many of the things that would help LIS professionals in using the cognitive surplus,

spurring it into participation in some way, can be directly addressed by a proper curriculum. If

LIS and museum professionals are trained to understand the tools and the challenges of

modern and emergent technology, libraries themselves will be more adaptable, better at

planning adoption and implementation, and better able to serve and connect not only their

communities, but also the creatives within those communities. Naturally, there are more issues

to cover, including issues of copyright and the way that companies have used patents and

copyright to control when, if, and how individuals can participate. There’s literacy issues,

namely there are differently literacies. How do you find a way to connect people together in a

way that allows them to use their individual skills and knowledge sets to collaborate on a

creation or a movement? After all, the library itself, especially with the push toward creating

makerspaces, can be a great networking tool. While the library staff must be able to work with

multiple different types of people and mindsets, a participatory culture fosters the same types

of interactions. At which point, who do you get those people not only together, but also

working together? How do you maintain social engagement and sure that people remain

engaged to what the library is providing either on-site or online? These are just some of the

things that are left to consider for a much larger project.

 Bibliography

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content/uploads/2016/04/Essential-Facts-2016.pdf

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http://exhibitions.nypl.org/100/digital_fun/play_the_game

Lankes, R. r., Stephens, M. m., & Arjona, M. m. (2015). Participatory and Transformative

Engagement in Libraries and Museums: Exploring and Expanding the Salzburg

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https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL861C5A6AE33D385D

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Retrieved March 22, 2017, from https://www.cnet.com/news/jane-mcgonigal-hits-new-york-

public-library-in-new-game/

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