Clay Shirky’s presentation style is very confusing. The presentation behind him did little to add to his presentation. He stayed in one place and did not vary his inflection very much. Understanding the sequence of his ideas was also difficult, and I found myself spending a large amount of time while watching the video thinking about how his graph could be improved, wondering why he chose LOL cats (something that I still do not understand), wishing that he would pace or emphasize so that I could understand what he was trying to say. He had good ideas, but they got lost in his presentation, in fact, I had to watch his presentation twice before understanding what he was trying to say. Once I did understand what he was trying to say, however, the reasons for his gestures and slides began to make sense. The problem with this is, of course, that the average person is not going to take the time to look at it twice, so the message has to be conveyed in such a method that the point of the TED talk is evident and meaningful to the audience when they are viewing it for the first time.
After watching this video, if find myself wondering how the internet could help us change the world. Of course, as Shirky points out, there are many individual sites that are already doing this. But I can’t stop wondering what might happen if we could connect all that energy and time into a cause, if everyone had the time and the motivation to change the world. I suppose that this might also create more problems than it solves. Facebook, for example causes significant problems to student education, child safety, and child privacy. I don’t know a single person with a Facebook (including myself) that has not had a fight, a break-up, or other serious incident while using their Facebook account. This fact is constantly ignored, even though it is very important to the way that we could change the world. This desire to post information and photos on the internet and share them with friends represents a potential for change on a massive scale. What is needed, and what Shirky helps with, is for people to become consciously aware of their ability. While the concept that the things you post on the internet are not just for you and your friends to see may be scary, I think that this also holds potential for how people will see their potential through the internet. If people became truly conscious that what they write on the internet is not just for someone a couple blocks away to see, not just for your relatives in another state to see, but for the entire world to see. While the internet may allow many companies to outsource their workforce, the internet also allows the creativity, open-minded attitude, and intrinsic motivations of people around the globe to come together to make a difference.
Another topic that Shirky’s talk brought to my attention is the possibility of a world where the greatest things in life, the most heroic and meaningful acts, come not from people who are being paid to perform them, but from those who do them because they want to do good. I think that this shift in perspective, if appreciated on a global scale, might lead to the reversal of a commonly held belief: That success in life depends on making money. Maybe this will change the perspectives of children growing up. Maybe then a child would say, “When I grow up, I am going to do something good for the world because I am passionate about it,” instead of, “When I grow up, I am going to invent something so that I can make lots of money,” and this shift in behavior will be appreciated by parents who realize that the world will be a place of good, hardworking, generous people working to better each other’s lives.
This video is important because it brings to the surface many of the things that we already know subconsciously, but do not have a way of recognizing on a conscious level. These ideas are important because they connect what we know with what we appreciate. Through his many examples, Shirky shows that the ability of people to volunteer and contribute in shared projects has the ability to change the world. The problem with our mindset, and the problem that I was having while watching this video is understanding just how big the internet really is, and comprehending its true potential for change, and the limitless applications that such a device has for our world. One thing that caught my eye is Shirky’s statement that “even the stupidest creative act is still a creative act.” Our internal motivation to do creative things is a motivation that has long been ignored as irrelevant, or at least inconsequential when compared with the rest of our skills as human beings, but it is this passion to create and imagine that has driven the human race as long as it has existed. There is something within us that makes us believe that we must be something larger than ourselves. That can only be realized with the power of creativity. The greatest inventors of all time were at first mediocre. Edison failed hundreds of times before succeeding in creating a single light bulb. Da Vinci failed to finish many of his masterpieces. The Wright Brothers failed to make several planes fly before they finally succeeded. Half of the missions sent to Mars have failed. And yet, if we keep trying there is the possibility of success. Just because we as a society are not good at something now does not mean that we cannot become good at it with practice. This is what the internet gives us. It gives us the ability to practice being one world. It helps us to understand that there is a world beyond our borders and it allows individuals to make sure that this world is not neglected. It gives a voice to a world population so that it may finally understand that people are all human beings, and that we all want the same basic things. We want food, water, shelter, safety, and the ability to create.
What Shirky brings to light is that this freedom to experiment will give light to society’s potential for change and our ability to appreciate our social connections. If we can consciously realize our subconscious tendencies to value the social over the economic, the civic over the communal, the intrinsic over the extrinsic, then perhaps we can overcome our roles as rational, self-maximizing actors.
“Free cultures get what they celebrate,” so let us appreciate our ability to promote change in ourselves and in the world with the tools that we have at our fingertips.
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