Cognitive Surplus and Autism
The general idea of cognitive surplus is that as technology increases, people are gaining more time and they are able to do increasingly creative projects that can reach more people than ever before. One example that the chapter discussed was wikipedia and how people from all over the world work together to create a collection of knowledge that anyone can read or add to.
I thought that the wikipedia page for autism was a great example of cognitive surplus. The amount of information on this page is really staggering and the amount of time it took to create this page in its entirety must have been enormous. Just looking at the references, there are 194 links to various articles and scientific papers. Going through all of those papers would probably take hundreds of hours, but because of wikipedia, people have put all of the information together in a concise way.
While looking through kickstarter, I found a project called the Autism Awareness Bracelet. It is basically a bracelet that lets people know that the wearer has autism, so that they understand why the wearer might not interact “normally” in social settings. What I found particularly amazing was how this project met their goal of $1,500 with only a short description and a picture. The makers of the bracelet described how they came up with the idea to help their child as he started school and people were so moved by this that they donated money to help.
I find the idea of cognitive surplus to be really inspiring because when people have free time, they so often use it to do great things. Editing wikipedia just for the sake of knowledge and donating money to help a family are just two examples of how humans use their free time and their creative to improve the world. Some things, such as editing wikipedia, do not even benefit the editor. They are done just to make the world a better place and that is really amazing when you think about it.
Image Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/728861456/autism-awareness-bracelet?ref=nav_search
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I think the Wikipedia page on autism is a really great resource for someone trying to get a general idea on the issue. The contributors on the article really came together and made an impressive collection of information. With the 194 outside references, you can tell that the information presented in the article is credible. This vast amount of references also allows for hours of additional reading on the topic for anyone who is interested in finding out more. It is also a protected article so you can be assured that only people who are interested in improving the article and keeping it credible are editing it.
I think the Autism Awareness Bracelet is a great yet simple way to raise awareness for this issue. It is such a simple idea, yet is very effective and was able to grab the attention of others. It is also good to see that the project was able to reach it’s goal of $1,500. This shows that there are others out there who are aware of Autism and are willing to spend their money to increase the awareness of the general public.