Response #4: Clay Shirky

1. What are your take-aways from this video?  My take aways were minimal for this video. He is not very organized, or better-put not very easy to understand. I did understand what cognitive surplus is as described in the video caption "Clay Shirky looks at "cognitive surplus" -- the shared, online work we do with our spare brain cycles. While we're busy editing Wikipedia, posting to Ushahidi (and yes, making LOLcats), we're building a better, more cooperative world." I did like his example of the graph that depicted the change in late pickups at day cares because i am a visual learner. Cognitive surplus really is emerging in the world with the new technology that is coming up. Humans now also post a lot of their spare thoughts on the internet on sites like Facebook and Twitter.
2. What are the speaker's effective speaking techniques? His speaking technique is loud with a varying tone. His pitch is practiced and good because it raises and lowers at appropriate times. Near the end, his voice softens and gets to the audience with its gentleness because he is trying to make a point. I don't think his speaking techniques were the best because I was more drawn in to other speakers because of their lightness and smoothness while also sense of humor.
3. What is his/her presentation style? I find his presentation style somewhat boring. The plus side is that he is prepared with graphs to support his talk. He is only talking and using a powerpoint during his speech. I wouldn't really like to be watching this live because he does not keep my attention very well and is not interactive much. I only heard the whole audience laugh once. I can tell he is a left-brained thinker because of the way he presents and the way he has thought of and wrote his presentation.
4. What matters from this video? How does it connect to you personally? To education? To the world? This video gives a meaning to all of the somewhat pointless stuff that is now surfacing the internet but does play out to have some meaning. I can relate to cognitive surplus because I have lots of spare thoughts that don't make it out of my mouth or onto paper, so they end up on the internet or somewhere electronic. I can connect this to my right-brained nature because my cognitive surplus is usually related to stories, design, or some other right-brain related ideas. this matters to the world because Shirky's concept, shown through examples like Ushahidi, is really true. The evolution of technology is really what has brought on such extraordinary expansion of online work with spare brain cycles.