Changing the World with a Little Thought

In this video Clay Shirky talks about how the world will be changed with cognitive surplus. Shirky defines cognitive surplus as the ability of the world's population to volunteer and to contribute and collaborate on large sometimes global projects. My take aways from this video are that this surplus of thought will change the world. I also took away that cognitive surplus is made up of two parts, the world's free time and talents and the other is the availability of information in the form of media and Internet and such. Shirky had very effective speaking techniques like speaking loudly and articulating all of his words so that the audience could understand him a little better. His presentation style was to throw a lot of facts at the viewers at one time and then explain later what they meant and their relevance. He also used a power point or slide show to further prove and enhance his points. What matters from this video is that the free time and talents of others combined with the availability of information due to media is going to cause the world to change. This matters to me personally because it will be mostly my generation that brings the change to the world. It matters to me because my generations' free time and talent mixed with the media will change the world. This matters to my education because a lot of this information that creates cognitive surplus is getting through to schools and thus creating even more availability of information. This matters to the world because the world is changing because of the amount of thoughts and ideas being produced. The world will never be the same because of cognitive surplus and that is why it matters to the world because we could be moving towards a bright future or a dark one. No one knows we can only guess and hopefully make this excess thought help our future not hinder it. How do we know what these thoughts will bring to our world? How can we be sure that it is a bright future not a dark one? Can we predict this new future? Can we only hope that cognitive surplus will better our world?