Not-for-profit Medical Societies, Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus, Social Media, and lolcats: Strange Bedfellows

Author Clay Shirky has a great book out called "Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age." If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. If you simply don't have time to read it, you can glean some insight into a number of the concepts he writes about by watching the TED video below: 

 A shout out to Kent Anderson of the Scholarly Kitchen for pointing out this video clip a couple of weeks ago.

Now, Shirky talks about how there is a massive amount of time that individuals have to spend on things that are of interest to them, are entertaining to them or to others, and/or have some "civic value" in making the world a better place, and the technology now exists to truly leverage that time in a global and mass collaborative manner. Some of the questions he poses include how to harness this "cognitive surplus," as well as how to motivate people from using it for less sophisticated pursuits (he uses lolcats as the example) to pursuits that provide a higher level of civic value to society as a whole (such as the crisis-mapping tool he shows in the video clip). Not to denigrate lolcats -- I'm sure many of you have spent time on the site, and perhaps even know someone who's used images from it in their lectures (*cough cough*). Who knows, you may have even posted a pic or two.

Anyway, back to cognitive surplus. Not-for-profit educational organizations like ACCP have long tapped into the cognitive surplus of you, our members. Our organizations are truly built around what Shirky calls the "culture of generosity." In fact, we rely upon the intrinsic motivations of our members to use their cognitive surplus for the activities we do which provide civic value to our end-users: physicians, health-care professionals, patients, and the public.  That cognitive surplus is embodied by your volunteerism as leadership, faculty, authors, peer reviewers, etc, and ACCP has provided the venues and channels to capture and deliver the end-results of the generosity of our membership. For that, we are immensely grateful. Our challenge going forward will be to continue to utilize emerging technologies to do this more effectively, efficiently, and on a broader global scale. Your participation, collaboration, and generosity will be valued by your peers, and the communities they serve.

On a semi-related note, when I started this blog, I wanted it to be informative and fun. So below is the history of lolcats. You can now impress your friends, colleagus, and kids by knowing the social significance of the lolcats meme. Yes, you can has cheezburger! 

Via: Online Schools

About the Author

Stephen Welch

Senior Vice President, Communications
Executive Editor, CHEST

This blog, "It Ain't Rocket Surgery" is intended to help busy health-care professionals find useful online and mobile resources that will enhance their self-education and professional research efforts, or point out important topics of discussion related to online information and content. The blog's title is a Yogi Berra style mash-up of two common phrases, "it ain't brain surgery" and "it ain't rocket science". I hope it will be casual, fun, insightful, and -- most of all -- educational.

You can follow me on Twitter. 

I currently serve ACCP as the Senior Vice President of Communications, as well as the Executive Editor of CHEST, the ACCP’s flagship journal. During my 15 years here, ACCP has focused on growing and developing the editorial, technological, and business aspects of the College. We are constantly striving to make the journal and other ACCP educational content as accessible and useful to clinicians as possible.

When not at work, I like to spend time scuba diving with sharks, collecting original comic book artwork, exploring the digital world, and searching for good BBQ.

Your feedback about the blog is always appreciated. So are tips on good BBQ joints.