Shirky is making the argument that media is no longer a one directional stream. Media now is divided up into consuming, producing, and sharing. Right now the most of the population is on the "consume" setting of media. The internet streams 1 trillion hours of tv a year that is consumed. Shirky is arguing that more of the time spend consuming could go to producing and sharing which could have a very positive effect on society as a whole. Shirky is saying that the change is coming soon with the new generation which is raised to not only consume, but interact with their media and then share what they made. This article coincides with the other two articles in that to be literate now is to be able to surf the web and read books and watch movies. But this article goes deeper in that it takes for granted that being literate is the ability to think deeply, this article just assumes that that is a basic part of being literate. This article goes on to say the being literate will soon mean producing and sharing a lot more than we do now. Shirky says that we will spend less time consuming and more time producing and that will help the population as a whole. Being literate will soon mean not watching culture from the outside, but making culture, and becoming an integral part of media and culture itself. This article matters because it goes beyond what Literacy is now and talks about what literacy will be like and require in the near future. This article finishes the scrooge story of literacy by giving us a glimpse of the future in addition to the present and past.

The repletion of "cognitive surplus" lets the reader know what really matters to Shirky. "Cognitive Surplus" is the amount of time that people have not being used by work, Cognitive surplus is the free time that we have that can be used for either consumption or production of media. Unfortunately now consumption is the name of the game when it comes to "cs" but the tide is beginning to turn to the direction of producing and sharing media rather than just consuming it. Shirky is saying that if we spend 1% of our tv time producing, we could make the equivalent of 100 total wikipedia's a year, not wikipedia pages, but the collective wikipedia as a whole. Shirky is saying that no one knows what will come of all this producing, but will millions of man hours and infinite ideas, he's betting there will be some positive projects that are beneficial to society.