Thursday, February 10, 2011

Ps3, btw

This will be the last post in this series I swear.

So what will happen when we no longer have to slave away all day to make money in order to having a living.

We're going to have a lot of free time. This will free us to do better things. This phenomenon is called cognitive surplus. It is going to make the world a better place. The internet has given us great things and allowed us to do amazing things.

LOLCATS. These are images with text superimposed on it. These are created and shared for their entertainment value - and its done for free. This is one result of having cognitive surplus.

There is also other things that people do as a result of cognitive surplus and that is to help other people through the internet. Ushahidi is a platform that allows web users to share information to make a better world. It was used to map incidents of violents after the 2008 Kenyan elections.

During the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake web users made maps which were then used by rescue workers on the ground to locate survivors.

Map mashups were also used in the 2011 UK student protest to avoid running into police kettles (traps) and in Egypt to document protests hotspots.

These can help make a better world for us all.

17 comments:

  1. I'm going to look into Ushahidi. That seems like its absolutely sweet.

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  2. This is the first time I've heard of such an idea but it sounds worth checking out.

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  3. more free time sounds good to me!

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  4. going to check out ushahidi - good tip bro

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  5. It's so easy to talk about, but ...not so easy to really get involved and do something. At least for me it isn't.

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  6. Thats a pretty interesting hypothesis you got there.

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  7. Never heard of free time making the world a better place. I find this intriguing.

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  8. It would be wonderful when we manage to get beyond the need for money and such, but probably not within my lifetime

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  9. i hope for the day that everyone has a ton of free time...then everyone just let robots do all the work xd

    http://skybluetrading.blogspot.com/

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  10. Hopefully you're right my friend but people will always be preoccupied with something.

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