I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago, and one of them was talking about sitting with his four-year-old daughter watching a DVD. And in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. That seems like a cute moment. Maybe she’s going back there to see if Dora is really back there or whatever. But that wasn’t what she was doing. She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, “What you doing?” And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, “Looking for the mouse.
An excerpt from Clay Shirky’s speech, Gin, Television, and Social Surplus, at the Web 2.0 conference about the increased productivity via “cognitive surplus.” Clay told this story to support his belief that this is more than just an idea and that people are growing accustomed to interacting with media and not simply consuming it.
