Draft Intro/1st Body Paragraph

Gerald Lappay

RWS 100

Professor Werry

September 7, 2014

How often do you think out loud? Do you accidentally blurt out your thoughts? Do you try to voice your opinions? Do you post thoughts you think are deep and meaningful just to get attention on social media? We talk about that in Clive Thompson’s book, “Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better”. What is public thinking? Is it one of the aforementioned questions? Is it a combination of them? Not necessarily. While all three of my initial questions to you can contribute to the idea of public thinking, they’re small ideas in comparison to what Thompson presents in his book.

Thompson introduces the concept of public thinking through facts, research, and accounts of online bloggers. He talks about the volume of what we post on the internet and how it compares to large treasuries of writing. “I calculate that we’re composing at least 3.6 trillion ords daily, or the equivalent of 36 million books every day. The entire U.S. Library of Congress, by comparison, holds around 35 million books.” (47) After what seems to be boring us with a story of a Kenyan blogger, and amazing us with sheer numbers, Thompson starts to pitch his main idea to us. Why not post more of our thoughts on the internet? I’m not talking about small, trivial things such as “I probably shouldn’t have ate that old slice of bread,” I’m talking about bigger ideas. How to cure diseases, how to contribute to the world’s problems. Pitch ideas on some online community where the biggest and brightest of them all can communicate,  contribute, design, and create. I think this is Thompson’s concept of public thinking.