Valuing Cognitive Surplus

Clay Shirky, NYU professor and author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, elucidates the idea of “cognitive surplus” and designates the efficient and responsible harnessing of this resource an undeniable necessity for the advancement of society. The implications of effectively applying cognitive surplus are enormous both within international and localized arenas. In the contemporary context of globalized labor markets, crowdsourcing, and the democratization of fields such as journalism and music distribution, cognitive surplus certainly emerges as the most desirable of resources. However, the quality of such a resource is called consistently into question – notably in the example of Wikipedia – and cognitive surplus, as a fairly recent phenomenon, still presents myriad dilemmas.

Some of the questions regarding cognitive surplus that must be answered are: How can individuals currently not contributing to the cognitive pool be encouraged to participate in a meaningful way? What defines meaningful? How can we assure the quality of the material produced by this surplus? How can we efficiently integrate this surplus? How will we regulate the application of this surplus, if at all, and who will be responsible for such regulation? How can we effectively study the output of this surplus and the corresponding qualitative and quantitative results? The solutions to these problems clearly are far beyond the scope of this essay; regardless, it is interesting to contemplate the shift in paradigm the very discussion of this issue necessitates and to examine entities already employing this cognitive surplus as demonstrative examples of successes and failures.

reCAPTCHA presents a particularly brilliant example of utilizing the quantitative power of cognitive surplus to complete a rote task that nevertheless requires human interaction. A CAPTCHA, or Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, ensures that responses given to computing queries (e.g., completing a user registration form) are not generated by computers and thus are not SPAM. Depending on Internet usage, the average individual probably completes between one to ten CAPTCHAs a day. Carnegie Mellon University developed reCAPTCHA to net the energy of this mindless and cursory task in order to facilitate the process of digitizing books, combining the efforts of millions of users to produce approximately 3,000 man-hours per day of free labor. And in this instance, output quality is verified quite simply by cross-referencing the results generated.

The gain generated by such programs is unquestionable. The effectiveness of other applications of cognitive surplus, though, remains uncertain. Shirky, referencing seemingly inane Internet pastimes such as World of Warcraft and the lolcat phenomenon, maintains, “It's better to do something than to do nothing” in the context of remote social participation. While it does seem clear that engagement and the establishment of a social network, to whatever purpose, is in general a boon, the fact remains that it is better to do something worthwhile than to do just something. The question being, of course, what defines worthwhile. As more platforms reliant upon cognitive surplus emerge and are refined, this question surely will begin to answer itself to some degree. In the meantime, society should encourage any and all attempts to engage individuals to work collaboratively toward some end, allowing for the present “just somethings” to evolve into consequential and relevant “somethings.”