Clay Shirky discusses cognitive surplus in his recent speech at Web 2.0, promoting his latest book, Here Comes Everybody.

Shirky’s point is the gradual replacement of passive media consumption (watching TV) with participatory media (Wikipedia, blogs).

Online data analysis services are in a similar position to where social software and services were several years ago. The promise is the replacement of passive consumption of data analysis (reading the paper, watching TV) with participatory analysis. Instead of waiting for someone designated as an expert to make a pronouncement concerning some new piece of data, we’ll all be able to inquire, explore and analyze such information ourselves, and to share our findings with others.