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Saturday, November 3, 2012

Cognitive Surplus: Can it Change the World?


Clay Shirky: How cognitive surplus will change the world


Clay discusses the generosity of a group of programmers that created Ushahidi, a crisis mapping system after a woman posted on her blog there was too much information for one person to go through manually.  The programmers understood what the problem was and how to fix it.  They did not 
charge for this program and provided it to others through an open source model.

There are people that have intrinsic motivation to create things for others to use and share.  We see these today in applications like Moodle and in the creation of free learning tools on-line.  

Free cultures and people in those cultures have many choices and in those choices we must figure out what we celebrate and pass on to those we influence.  We can celebrate television and make it more important then education.  On the other hand we can celebrate science, technology, and education.

Leadership is complicated, in our current environment, and many external factors influence one’s ability fully celebrate what should be celebrated and rewarded. 

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