Managing the Social Surplus

I think it is a great idea for everyone to watch this. It's a speech given by Clay Shirkyon at a web conference (full transcript can be read here.) In the speech, Clay talks about what he calls the social surplus. Here is how he describes it: ...rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before--free time. The next several paragraphs talk about what we decided to do with this free time. In the 19th century, we basically used that free time to get drunk. Clay references "gin pushcarts working their way through the streets of London". We did this for many years, since other forms of entertainment were few and expensive. In the 20th century, he argues that the new time-waster has become TV sitcoms. Last year, American people spent 200 billion hours engrossed in a non-interactive, sedentary activity. Many people referenced the decay of our society in terms of this massive amount of TV watching, but the fact of the matter is that TV had (partially) replaced getting drunk, but without a new paradigm it was difficult to step out of TV's intoxicating appeal. ..the interesting thing about a surplus like that is that society doesn't know what to do with it at first--hence the gin, hence the sitcoms. Because if people knew what to do with a surplus with reference to the existing social institutions, then it wouldn't be a surplus, would it? It's precisely when no one has any idea how to deploy something that people have to start experimenting with it, in order for the surplus to get integrated, and the course of that integration can transform society. And it's only now, as we're waking up from that collective bender, that we're starting to see the cognitive surplus as an asset rather than as a crisis. We're seeing things being designed to take advantage of that surplus, to deploy it in ways more engaging than just having a TV in everybody's basement. ...or at least some people are. The following anecdote is quite amusing, but also almost universally true: I was being interviewed by a TV producer to see whether I should be on their show, and she asked me, "What are you seeing out there that's interesting?" I started telling her about the Wikipedia article on Pluto. You may remember that Pluto got kicked out of the planet club a couple of years ago, so all of a sudden there was all of this activity on Wikipedia. The talk pages light up, people are editing the article like mad, and the whole community is in an ruckus--"How should we characterize this change in Pluto's status?"...So I tell her all this stuff, and I think, "Okay, we're going to have a conversation about authority or social construction or whatever." That wasn't her question. She heard this story and she shook her head and said, "Where do people find the time?" That was her question. And I just kind of snapped. And I said, "No one who works in TV gets to ask that question. You know where the time comes from. It comes from the cognitive surplus you've been masking for 50 years." This is a TV person - stealers of 200 billion hours of American free time per year - asking "where do people find the time"? Perhaps they find in those 200 billion hours?? This seems kind of strange at first, until one realizes that in a social context, sitting around mindlessly watching TV is considered normal. Spending time in an electronic interactive environment is not: In this same conversation with the TV producer I was talking about World of Warcraft guilds, and as I was talking, I could sort of see what she was thinking: "Losers. Grown men sitting in their basement pretending to be elves." At least they're doing something. However lousy it is to sit in your basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal experience it's worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter. I agree. I recently wrote a post on a similar subject. I didn't realize it at the time, but what I was really trying to get at was the essence of this speech: Interactive online electronics are the 21st century's version of managing the social surplus, much as alcohol in the 19th century and TV in the 20th. The key difference is that, although it may not seem that way at first, the level of interaction with others in the social surplus is growing. In the 19th century, people sought to escape reality in a bottle, a place that allows for essentially zero social interaction. Any interaction that does occur is negative as often as not. In the 20th century, the destructive nature of drinking was slowly replaced by the non-destructive - yet still non-interactive - vice of TV. It is only recently, with the growth of available technology, that the interactive aspect of human relationships can be integrated. Hence, online communities, chat rooms, and video games. This article in Prospect has a similar view. It reviews the shift in terms of "expert" opinion from the people who say that video games corrupt children, and that they don't promote intellectual growth the way great theatre and literature do. Before reviewing this question, Prospect first notes the incredible growth in the online interactive arena: The video games industry, meanwhile, continues to grow at a dizzying pace. Print has been around for a good 500 years; cinema and recorded music for around 100; radio broadcasts for 75; television for 50. Video games have barely three serious decades on the clock, yet already they are in the overtaking lane. In Britain, according to the Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association, 2007 was a record-breaking year, with sales of "interactive entertainment software" totalling £1.7bn—26 per cent more than in 2006. In contrast, British box office takings for the entire film industry were just £904m in 2007—an increase of 8 per cent on 2006—while DVD and video sales stood at £2.2bn (just 0.5 per cent up on 2006), and physical music sales fell from £1.8bn to £1.4bn. At this rate, games software, currntly our second most valuable retail entertainment market, will become Britain's most valuable by 2011. Even books—the British consumer book market was worth £2.4bn in 2006—may not stay ahead for ever. This is obviously not confined to the multi-player gaming scene, but even 1 player video games involve infinitely more interaction than the average TV program. Regardless of the number of buttons pressed, the ball will still roll between Bill Buckner's legs every time (included for the baseball fans). In a video game, however, the user can learn how to prevent this from happening, and can use this knowledge to actualize the desired result. Back to the central criticism, though. Claiming that video game growth somehow limits intellectual growth through more traditional means is severely antiquated. I can count on one hand the number of people in my office that know how Othello is, and they have not suffered the scourge of video game play. But what about other hobbies - woodworking, model making, kit cars, etc? Surely video game take away from these? Of course they do. But these are all simply time-filling activities as well, with no more inherent value than video games. Determining the proper way to repair a motorcycle engine is not intrinsically more intellectually valuable than learning the complex strategies required to defeat a well-written video game. Yet beneath the hysterical rhetoric of many objectors, there are eminently reasonable concerns. Spending time playing video games means not spending time on more traditional leisure activities, such as sport, reading or conventional socialising. And, seen from the outside, the benefits of playing thousands of hours of video games can be hard to pinpoint. This is a true statement. The key thing to understand, however, is that the social surplus is about something other than "intellectual growth", or a "profound shift in a child's worldview". it is simply about one thing. Enjoyment. We spend so many hours working, going to class, and generally being impressed upon to "make something of ourselves", that we loose the child-like wonder of doing an activity purely because we like it. In a world where children recieve ever more schoolwork as well as more structured activity to help shape their lives, it occurs to me that sometimes they just need to be kids and enjoy themselves. This will not be done in the same way as in the previous generation. In the same way that older people look back in fondness on their youth, so will the current generation of youth. It is not the particular activity that is important, but rather the emotion that is derived from it. I have discussed several times with gaming friends of mine the pure euphoria that is derived from completing a seemingly impossible electronic task. As a huge athelete, I can tell you that this euphoria is tantamount to the "thrill of victory" on the athletic field. The activity is different, but the result is the same. The older generation will always find fault with the priorities and methods of the current generation - "Back in my day...we did it idfferently". Well, guess what? It's not your day anymore, either in the social or personal context. Things are differnt. Things will continue to be different. Get used to it.