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Andrew Lanza
ENT3003
Professor Pryor
11/2/17
Reading Reflection No.2
1)   For my second reading reflection, I chose Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky. This book was particularly eye opening for me, because it highlighted a lot of intricacies in my (our) everyday lives that I otherwise wouldn’t spend time thinking about. The book explores the broad impact of television on our lives as a medium for diffusion of information and general time sink. Cognitive Surplus gives empirical evidence as to what holds us back as society, as Shirky derives a portion of this from the amount of time we spend consuming media and television. His comparative alternatives to time spent watching television show the stark nature of time seemingly wasted internationally by billions of people every day. Shirky approaches the storytelling of Cognitive Surplus with a sort of “what-if” outlook on society, which encapsulated me while I was reading it. This was because the picture he paints of what we as a society would be if our free time was allocated towards collaboration and advancing technology was very gripping, and you can almost feel the change he implies that would exist if our time were spent as such.
2)   I think Cognitive Surplus worked in alignment with the body of thinking I do in Entrepreneurship because it helped me think in ways I normally do not. More specifically, it gave me (seemingly) practical alternatives of what I could expect in life without just a couple less belongings (TV, smartphone) in terms of productivity and success. It gave me some realizations about myself that I didn’t love, but it making me more cognizant of those things is part of what made me find the book such a valuable read.
3)   If I had to design an exercise based off of this book, I would assign the task of creating a list of what you would spend all your free time doing if you had no television or smartphone. I would then ask for an analysis of how one’s time could be used to be productive more often in their free time, and how their life might be better if they spent more time doing those things.

4)   I’m not sure my ‘aha’ moment necessarily differed from my expectations, but it was eye opening nonetheless. When reading the book, I noticed how poorly I manage my time overall. It highlighted the amount of time Americans spend watching TV, and it felt like it applied really well to me. It was an uncomfortable realization, but it was really interesting to learn what Shirky has to say in his amazing book.

Comments

  1. Ellliot LopatukhinNovember 5, 2017 at 4:36 PM

    It sounds like "Cognitive Surplus" was an interesting and eye opening book. I am going to consider adding it to my reading list. I have two perspectives to watching TV. My first outlook on TV is that it is often a waste of time, and the time spent watching TV can be used advancing our knowledge by reading books or doing other activities. My other thought is that TV helps us relax and rest our minds from busy days. I believe that a compromise of these two thoughts is the best for the advancement of our cognitive intelligence. Good job on your book review!

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  2. UnknownNovember 5, 2017 at 5:29 PM

    Sounds like your book was an interesting read. I definitely feel that watching TV and I would also add playing video games takes so much of people’s time that I am not surprised it is holding us back as a society. I watch all my TV on my computer and I remember when mine broke, I did not know what to do with myself because I had so much free time on my hands. Overall great job on the assignment.

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