Think.

Question.

Extrapolate.

Theorize.

Experiment.

Analyze.

Make something new and cool.

And don’t be afraid to ask questions.

I’ll admit that my interest in this whole cognitive surplus concept (per Clay Shirky) may be bordering on obsessive, but apparently I can’t stop writing about it.  The idea of being able to harness even small fractions of surplus brain cycles that many people tend to throw away while watching television or otherwise passive pursuits and then do cool things with them is an awe-inspiring concept.

The other morning I did a brain dump of potential projects that could be crowdsourced or distributed.  Some of these items already exist.  Most of them already probably exist in some fashion.  Perhaps, however, there are one or two useful ones here that no one has thought of before.

PLEASE NOTE:  these are not money-making ideas! These are ideas for collaborative action to make some part of the world a tiny bit better, more interesting, or more fun.

I want you to add to this list.  Critique it.  Find examples of where these kinds of projects are already happening.  Come up with something completely crazy that no one would ever think of doing and then add it.  You can add it in the comments, you can write your own blog post (please link back here, thanks!), whatever.  I think we could come up with some really cool, innovative, and crazy ideas if we really put our minds to it.

And then… we should pick one and actually try it.

What say you?

Here’s the list:

1. Listings of amateur photographers who are willing to do special events at cost
2. Listing of Zen Buddhism masters
3. Listings of Zen Buddhism temples/schools/clubs
4. Maps showing the known locations of criminals of all sorts
5. Database of photos showing civic neglect (potholes, building code violations, etc.)
6. Locations of comic book stores by town/city and state/province/territory
7. Listings of adult entertainment retail outlets
8. Where you can find rare commodities (e.g. books, collectibles, sporting equipment, industrial equipment, scientific supplies, etc.)
9. Locations of safe homes (e.g. Block Parents) where kids can go if being bullied or are in trouble
10. Locations of companies that offer plant or facilities tours
11. Locations of all religious groups, etc. within a community
12. Locations of charity organizers
13. Locations of volunteer workers willing to help out with fundraising and volunteer work
14. Tutors of any/all kinds
15. Music venues, both free and paid
16. Amateur musicians who are ready to jam with you
17. Amateur actors willing to participate in local theatre
18. Book reviews (e.g. Amazon.com)
19. Miscellaneous review sites (e.g. ePinions)
20. The restaurants where I can find the best specific dishes of food
21. Road condition reports updated interactively by drivers
22. Pet sitters
23. Pet clubs
24. Activities for senior citizens
25. Volunteers for helping senior citizens
26. Listings of kids interested in certain kinds of activities so parents can form play groups and find new friends for their children
27. Games clubs: who likes to play which board games/card games, etc.
28. Best fishing holes in an area
29. Ways to navigate government bureaucracy (how to get a marriage license, drivers license, building permit, business license, etc.)
30. Support groups for families with handicapped or otherwise challenged members
31. Orientation information for people who move to a new area for the first time
32. People who will help new immigrants with their special language or cultural needs
33. Listings where people can get
34. For writers: a gigantic database of premade characters, crowdsourced, that can be used freely by any author for an attribution credit
35. Also for writers: scenes; locations; scenarios, images, etc.
36. Maps tracking the locations and types of violent crimes in a community
37. Crowdsourced manuals of ideas of how to deal with deaths, breakups, violent crimes, etc.
38. The best chess players in a given city/state
39. Where to find the best poker games locally
40. Volunteer teachers/instructors of any kind
41. Where to find the best fiddleheads (fiddleheads are a kind of edible fern/plant)
42. Locations of all stop signs/traffic lights in a community
43. Parking maps: where is the best/closest/cheapest parking in community (include overflow or private parking for special events)
44. Listings of local heroes/accomplishments
45. Local experts, who you can meet face to face, of all kinds/shapes/sizes
46. Where are the best park benches in a community?
47. Where can you find water fountains/pools/streams/rivers locally?
48. Where can you go ice skating locally?
49. Databases showing the results/impacts/opinions on local legislation
50. Listings of bloggers in a community
51. Where you can get shoe repairs, ice skates sharpened, sporting equipment fixed
52. Listing of people who will do yardwork
53. Listing and reviews of local auto mechanics
54. Photos of local achievements
55. Amateur videos of local cultural events (e.g. dance recitals, plays, concerts, variety shows, etc.)
56. Listings and rankings of yard sales
57. Websites listing yard sale items in advance of the yard sale
58. Locations/timings of local charity fundraisers, including places for donations, volunteer requests, etc.
59. Hottest/coldest locations in an area
60. Places where you can exchange funds into different currencies
61. Employers looking for summer students; summer students looking for employers
62. Teenager reactions to local legislation and
63. Custom LEGO model designs from existing LEGO sets
64. Listings of places where people tend to find lost or spare change floating around
65. Listings of places where you can get change for a $20 bill and the time of day when you can get this change
66. Listing of optimal travel routes which minimize stop lights, stop signs, etc.

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This is a nutty little idea that I’ve had floating around my head of late.  It would be an example of cognitive surplus in action.

As per Clay Shirky, cognitive surplus is the free time that our brains have in this post-agrarian age which we often devote to unproductive things like watching television because we don’t need the extra brain cycles to hunt food, build shelter, or otherwise simply survive.  Cognitive surplus is a benefit from moving off farms into more urban settings and largely adhering to the 40 hour work week.

Sometimes we take this left-over time and collectively do some interesting things like creating and maintaining Wikipedia, social news and bookmarking sites (e.g. Mixx, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Ning groups, etc.) and the amazing collections of images on Flickr, including the famous Coney Island Mermaid Parade that Shirky has talked about before.  If you want a more recent example of collective yet lightly coordinated action, go to Twitter Search and see the staggering amount of Tweets that use the term #sxsw, used to tag information about the annual South by Southwest conference.

At the same time you have interesting examples of distributing processing of information, such as:

• the  SETI@Home program that allows volunteers to devote some of their computer’s spare processing cycles to analyzing data that has been detected by Earth’s radio telescopes, which the hope of finding signs of extra-terrestrial life
• Wikipedia is, again, another example
• Project Gutenberg, in which paper publications are gradually being converted from paper to electronic formats that can be read by anyone with a computer and an Internet connection.  In each case, hundreds or thousands of individuals are contributing small pieces of work to help achieve a goal.

These projects can exist through the combination of technologies and “free time” that we can devote to things above and beyond survival.

The thing is, we’re not necessarily limited to computers to actually do distributed work, although the coordination aspect would be almost impossible without them.  But the work itself could be incredibly simple.
Consider counting to the number 1,000,000 (one million) for a moment.  In English.

The first few numbers are easy as they are mostly monosyllabic.  You can say two of those numbers in a second.  Then, as the digits and syllables increase, each number takes longer.

Try saying 888,888 (eight hundred thousand, eight hundred and eighty-eight) out loud for a moment.  A number of that size can take 3 – 4 seconds to say in a reasonable length of time.  You could probably do it in less time than that, but it would be hard to keep doing it quickly without eventually making a mistake and losing count.

If we assume, for argument’s sake, that it takes 3.0 seconds to count a number (on average), it would take 3 million seconds for one person to count from 1 to 1,000,000.  That’s 833.3 hours or 34.7 days spent non-stop counting (which is impossible because that doesn’t leave time for meals, bio breaks, or sleep.)  Assuming a 40 hour work week spent counting, it would take that same person 104.16 days to count from 1 to 1,000,000.

Although it’s not possible for 9 women to collectively birth a healthy child from the time of concept to delivery in one month, there are ways to slice and dice the counting operation of Count One Million:

Two people could do the job in roughly 17.35 of those non-stop counting days if one person takes the numbers 1 – 500,000 and the other takes the rest.

Ten people could do the job in roughly 3.5 non-stop counting days if each took a block of 100,000 numbers.

One hundred people could do the job in roughly 8.3 hours if each counted in blocks of 10,000.

And so on.  So adding people certainly makes things go faster.

In fact, they can go even faster if people count in units of less than 1,000 numbers, because it takes less time to say (or think) each number if they are three digits or less than if these numbers have 4 – 6 digits.  By splitting it that way, each person can easily say each number in one second.  So, not only do you shorten the elapsed time by splitting up the workload like this, but you can also cut down the workload to one-half or one-third of its original amount by arranging the work into more efficient packages and distributing it among multiple people like this.

You could well argue that it makes no sense to have a group count a large number like this in this age of computers.  However, this simple example speaks volumes about the potential power of harnessing cognitive surplus to do big things.

1. Isn’t it amazing how 6:01 comes immediately after 6:00? Every single day!

2. The three-ring binder doesn’t get the credit it deserves. Maybe it’s because it’s so easy to rip pages out. Plus they get harder to schlep around when they fill up. And who likes hole punching?

3. You know how Microsoft Excel allows you to group different worksheets into a single, linked file? I wonder if there’s an application out there that does the same thing with document or text files. Microsoft Office used to have a Binder feature, but I’m wondering if there’s something smaller and easier to use. Basically the electronic version of a notebook with pages, with the same look and feel as Excel.

4. Notebooks are great for capturing ideas on the fly. Transcription is still a pain.

5. I just found out that there’s a free online version (read: neutered) of Photoshop. Go figure.

6. A 5 KG bag of flour costs about $9.00 where I live. A 10 KG bag (read: twice the size) costs only $3.00 more. Hmmm.
7. Although I don’t drink it much anymore, the price of soda pop seems to be increasing very quickly.
8. I’ve been spelling and pronouncing remuneration wrong for years.
9. I don’t think about Technorati much anymore.
10. I wonder if there’s any one song in the world that everyone would like.