Skip to content

Ecce Signum

Immanentize the Empathy

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Published Works and Literary Matters
  • Indexes
  • Laboratory

The Cognitive Sinks

2008-04-30 John Winkelman

A few days ago a crime mapping article I wrote for the People Design blog went live. It pulls together thoughts I have had about this whole mapping thing, and some input from some other people who are involved in this sort of thing.

On Monday I came across a link to a presentation Clay Shirky gave at the Web 2.0 conference last week (transcript of the speech) (video of the speech). In it he talks about the idea of a “cognitive surplus”, and what that could mean for the world in the upcoming years. The idea, brutally simplified, is that as we cease indulging in passive entertainment and begin involving ourselves more and more in interactive pursuits, the amount of available brain-power in the world will increase dramatically. Not that the brains haven’t always been there; they have been turned down to a flicker by being pure consumers of ideas rather than producers.

Shirky brought up the common comment about people who do things like create the Wikipedia: “Where do they find the time?” Simple. They are actively exercising their imaginations, rather than passively absorbing someone else’s output.

The comments and compliments my co-workers offered me about the crime map, combined with the Shirky talk, got me to thinking. The crime map was a simple project. Other than gathering the crime data, it really represented about five hours of work. An afternoon. The length of two of the Matrix movies. If everyone who sat through the Matrix movies more than once, decided instead to exercise their imaginations for that time instead, how many more wonderful things would there be in the world?

Posted in Issues

Post navigation

The Weekly Avocado
Spring in Huff Park

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Personal website of
John Winkelman

John Winkelman in a diner in San Francisco

Archives

Categories

Posts By Month

April 2008
S M T W T F S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
27282930  
« Mar   May »

Twitter Feed

Retweet on TwitterJohn Winkelman Retweeted
GennHutchisonGennifer Hutchison@GennHutchison·
20 Jun

Talking to someone about an estranged adult child and their parent, and the person could not understand the child cutting the parent off because "if they die, wouldn't you feel terrible you never made peace?" And it's interesting because... (cont'd)

Reply on Twitter 1539034762790113280Retweet on Twitter 15390347627901132801459Like on Twitter 15390347627901132808052Twitter 1539034762790113280
JohnWinkelmanJohn Winkelman@JohnWinkelman·
19 Jun

Father's Day Sunday brunch with @gallafe . Pop-up brunch in the Chez Olga space on Wealthy Street. Pork sisig, singkamas salad, deviled eggs, and rice. Food served until 1:30 pm so you still have time! I think Jim Harrison would have liked this meal.

Reply on Twitter 1538551512284246016Retweet on Twitter 1538551512284246016Like on Twitter 1538551512284246016Twitter 1538551512284246016
Retweet on TwitterJohn Winkelman Retweeted
LouisPeitzmanLouis Peitzman@LouisPeitzman·
17 Jun

Lauren Boebert spells things wrong in her tweets because it dramatically increases engagement, hope this helps.

Reply on Twitter 1537861383026614274Retweet on Twitter 15378613830266142741083Like on Twitter 15378613830266142748988Twitter 1537861383026614274
Load More...

Links of Note

Reading, Writing
Tor.com
Locus Online
The Believer
File 770
IWSG

Watching, Listening
WYCE Electric Poetry
Writing Excuses Podcast
Our Opinions Are Correct

News, Politics, Economics
Naked Capitalism
Crooked Timber

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

© 2022 Ecce Signum

Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: x-blog by wpthemespace.com