TED Talk #4- Clay Shirky (Cognitive Surplus)

I think the thing that we need to take away from this video is that fact that the idea of reward and punishment is going to be an essential tool required in the future.  By showing the example of the cats and the Ushahidi, Mr. Shirky showed that we need to improve our system of social media to meet the expectancies of what we as the people want.  Websites such as Ushahidi benifit everyone, and not just the participants of that site.  I think the world needs to focus itself around that way of operating, because I think that it will end up being more profitable and more beneficial for the world as a whole.  When Mr. Shirky was speaking, I noticed that he had a powerpoint running in the background the entire time that he was giving his presentation.  Since I've started watching all these TED Talks, I have been beginning to notice a trend with the presentation types of the speakers.  Most of them have a visual representation that exemplifies or shows the point that they are trying to get across, and I think this is a rather effective technique because you can keep your audience interested in your topic and still speak without having to stop and actually show them what product or idea that speaker may have been working on.  The thing that I think really matters from this video is the idea that the idea of social media is an important aspect for the world to be able to function.  When we as students get older, we will need to have to be able to connect the world in this manner, and if we can't do that then I don't think that we will be very successful.