About the name change
William Grosso @ May 23, 2008
This blog used to be called “Wander, Think, Repeat.” That was a good name — it encapsulated what I do most of the time: I wander around, I listen to people, and I think. Then I do it again. And again. In short, it summarized a lot about me in one short phrase1 .
The new title is “Tales from the Cognitive Surplus” — why the name change?
Well, for one, the new title is just plain better at encapsulating what this blog is. It’s a repository of meanderings, maunderings, and the intellectual doodles that would otherwise never get written down at all.
For another, Jeremy Zawodny put the following video, entitled Explaining the Cognitive Surplus, on his site. It’s a great short talk by Clay Shirky that manages to explain three very important things:
- Why we don’t have flying cars2.
- Why Wikipedia is only the beginning.
- Where people find the time to blog.
Here’s how the talk starts:
A British historian argued that the critical technology for the early phases of the industrial revolution was gin … If I had to pick the technology that I thought was critical to the 20′th century, a bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would have come off the entire enterprise, I’d have to say it was the sitcom.
Clay goes on to talk about how we use spare time to reduce social turmoil during times of upheaval3 . What better name for a blog than a tribute to the best talk of Web 2.0 ?
Here’s the entire video. Well worth watching.
- Plus, it reminded me of shampoo bottles and a really bad joke about people accidentally getting caught in an infinite loop. Lagniappe is a good thing too.↩
- see also: I Want My Jet Pack↩
- As my friend Martin would say, “Hobbies are important”↩
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