digital: collective surplus for good?

Having a conversation with an old colleague of mine Zoe Scaman about the idea of digital changing our cognitive process (for the worst) she introduced me to a recent article where suggested that "the case that technology increases our intelligence is at least as plausible as the gloomy idea that it is changing our brains for the worse, there are real downsides to the instant availability of torrents of information. The danger comes not from the information itself, or from how it could rewire our brains, but from the way we think about our own knowledge and abilities".

Social Media Theorist, Clay Shirky interestingly points out that new technologies enable a loose ­collaboration which takes advantage of “spare” brainpower enabled by the internet, which can change the way society works. In fact he believes for every way the Internet gives us to waste time, there is a way to increase the scope and diversity of our knowledge and to work collectively on problems not just on your doorstep or in your country but across the world - he uses the Ushahidi information collecting open source platform as an example of this.

And so why would someone want to share their surplus brain power? What are our intrinsic motivations? Clay explains that social constraints can create a culture that is more generous than a contractual one. Economic motivations may not align with our intrinsic motivations. The internet gives us the freedom to experiment which means the freedom to experiment with anything. It enables us to continue to consume, because that's what humans like doing and have been doing for a while but what it also allows us to do is create and share - two intrinsic motivations that are now not only enabled, but also, empowered in terms of breadth, scope and arguably time. So perhaps the interwebs are not bad after all.