Ted Talk #4 (Clay Shirky)

Clay Shirky's Ted Talk had to do mostly with using the world's free time and talents to create things that whole communities and even the whole world could benefit from. He called the use of the world's free time and talents 'cognitive surplus'. Clay goes on to tell a story about a Kenyan woman creating a website called 'Ushahidi' which takes reports from fields, aggrigates them, and puts them on a map to make available to the entire population(crisis mapping).  She had this idea during a presidential election so that people would have more information on the subject, and in 72 hours her and a few engineers created this website. It's amazing to think that something like that could be done in 72 hours. Clay Shirky also expressed that nothing could be done without two things; human generosity, and digital technology. I thought it was really interesting how different those two things are, but how they play together so well. Technology is communication, yet human generosity is a way of living. So communication and a way to get information out to others, and an act of generosity from a person go hand in hand to create things. I also liked how Clay used his body and hands when he spoke to help express things and to help the audience visualise things, but didn't fidgit. He used a very clear, strong voice that you really couldn't help but listen to. He used story and comparisons to state his points, and they worked well together. I think if the world used more of cognitive surplus, and the balance between digital technology and human generosity, we could create things beyond our imaginations. So far, i think our world uses too much of digital technology, and not enough generosity to balance it out.