Cognitive Surplus

Clay Shirky starts from a single measure of how people spend their free time: television. Through the second half of the 20th century, the amount of it watched rose every year, and viewers worldwide now log more than one trillion hours annually. Shirky treats those hours as a cognitive surplus, the spare time and ability of the world's educated citizens.

His argument about television is not a moral one. He does not treat it as evil or even bad. His point is that the medium is extremely good at absorbing leisure while producing very few tangible results. It tells stories, eases loneliness and fills empty hours.

To make the case, Shirky compares television to gin in London in the 1720s. In his view, both helped people cope with modern life by softening the edges of their reality.

This is non-fiction that works as an argument about society and media. It asks what else all that collective free time might be used for. It suits readers curious about technology, leisure and how people spend their attention.