As Clay Shirky begins his talk, my head is spinning with all of the information. Right away, Shirky launches into a description of a website called Ushahidi, which was originally started in Kenya after a political scandal. All of the media was shut down, so one woman began blogging everything that was going on. Soon, there was too much information to handle, so she asked for help. Two men pitched in and Ushahidi. The website reports on important national events, and is useful when all local media has bee shut down. Similar websites to Ushahidi are now used across the globe.

Clay Shirky then adresses cognitive thinking. Cognitive thinking is creative thinking. Shirky then goes on to explain cognitive surplus, which is the widespread sharing of creative ideas. Shirky believes in people doing it not for money, but for the good of the whole. He thinks people should to it out of generosity. There are two kinds of cognitive surplus, communal and global. Communal has an effect on the community, for which he uses the example of lol cats. Global has an effect on the entire world, and is used across the globe, like Ushahidi.

Shirky also talks about the way we use our free time. He says the average person has 1 trillion free hours a year. He says if we all used that free time, we could be using our minds to help others. We could create inventions that have a global effect.