CEDO 525 - Enhanced Learning - Week 4 Response to TED talk

The video that I chose to respond to was the one addressing "Cognitive Surplus" by Clay Shirky.  The main idea that was trying to be conveyed was that people are finding more constructive ways to use their free time than in the past.  Shirky maintains that people have been enormously consumptive (consume or take-in things vs giving output) but feels like that trend is changing with the advent of online tools, especially ones that allow for collaboration.  Shirky thinks these online tools are helping transform people into "creators" rather than "consumers".  Instead of watching hours and hours of television Shirky says that people are creating things, going online, and sharing them.  He notes that even though some people might be creating silly, meaningless things (he uses LOLCats as an example) that it is still creating and that eventually good things will come of it.  I tend to agree with Shirky on several of his main points.  Shirky states that when the printing press was developed "it took 150 years to graduate from erotic novels to Scientific journals" and I think that is a really good example.  An example that I thought of is YouTube.  YouTube started out with goofy videos of people doing ridiculous things, sports highlights, Vlogs, etc. and slowly started being used for more productive things like "How-To videos".  Now there are so many educational uses for it (Khan Academy) that it has spun off into several other "Tubes" like Teacher Tube for example.  I'm not sure how many people are making the shift from consumer to creator but let's hope that Mr. Shirky is right about people making better use of their free time because it could produce some amazing results as these online and digital tools are discovered and used for bigger and better things than LOLCats.