LitCircle Book Response

Agnes Gul
Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age
Meeting Number Three
Pages 97-159

Opportunity and Culture

            These next two chapters mainly discussed about how groups can be an organizing principle of something that wants and/or needs to be done. In the Opportunity Chapter, Shirky claims that something can be done more efficiently and more rapidly if done in a group, rather than done by one person; this is because groups tend to spread among people that are not directly related to the group. In the Culture chapter, Shirky states that “The more people in a community who can understand a particular fact, method, or story, the likelier it is that those people will be able to work together to make use of those bits of knowledge.” (Shirky, 140) In other words, as mentioned in the Culture chapter, knowledge can spread among a particular group, and spread into “peripheral” groups as well.

            “…much twentieth –century economics mistakenly assumed that market transactions are an ideal and even default model for human interactions. But some kids of value can’t be created by markets, only by a set shared and mutually coordinating assumptions, which is to say by culture.” (Shirky, 136) We can see that the organizing principle of most inventions, ideas, and creations are based upon groups. Just how an infectious disease can transmit from one person to another in a fraction of days, so can ideas within groups. Some people see a group challenging the status quo or trying to break the Philistine way of thinking, they’re most likely to join that group if it personally relates to them, and then others will join, and so and so on; as a result, it creates a chain reaction. The Internet plays a key role in the spreading of ideas since the Internet is global and ideas can be shared across the world. Thanks to modern technology, we are able to globally share our ways of thinking and collaborate with one another.