Notes on Shirky

Clay Shirky’s speech “Gin, Televsion, and Social Surplus” was both thought provoking and entertaining. I chuckled at many of his colorful analogies, such as his theory that a TV show like “Desperate Housewives” functions as a “cognitive heat sink, dissipating thinking that might otherwise have built up and caused society to overheat.”

I also laughed when he referred to “that episode of Gilligan’s Island where they almost get off the island and then Gilligan messes up and then they don’t.” Isn’t this the plot of most episodes of Gilligan’s Island? I think all those episodes have merged into one in Shirky’s memory.