Cognitive surplus is the reconception of leisure time—the ~20 hours/week of TV watching per person, aggregating to roughly a trillion hours/year in the industrialized world—as an aggregate raw material that can be designed around; Wikipedia consumed only ~100 million hours total (less than Americans spend watching ads on a single weekend), making such projects explainable as harnessed surplus requiring only invitation and reward rather than recruiting and management.

definitionpending

Speaker

Clay Shirky

Evidence Quote

Americans watch a hundred million hours every weekend just watching ads

Source

Clay Shirky on Coase, Collaboration and Here Comes Everybody 10/20/2008EconTalk
Created: 6/15/2026, 9:28:59 AM

My Notes

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