Death of the sitcom frees up 2,000 Wikipedias worth of cognitive capacity
Link (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)[S]he shook her head and said, "Where do people find the time?" That was her question. And I just kind of snapped. And I said, "No one who works in TV gets to ask that question. You know where the time comes from. It comes from the cognitive surplus you've been masking for 50 years."
So how big is that surplus? So if you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project--every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in--that represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought. I worked this out with Martin Wattenberg at IBM; it's a back-of-the-envelope calculation, but it's the right order of magnitude, about 100 million hours of thought.
And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that's 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads. This is a pretty big surplus. People asking, "Where do they find the time?" when they're looking at things like Wikipedia don't understand how tiny that entire project is, as a carve-out of this asset that's finally being dragged into what Tim calls an architecture of participation.
Now, the interesting thing about a surplus like that is that society doesn't know what to do with it at first--hence the gin, hence the sitcoms. Because if people knew what to do with a surplus with reference to the existing social institutions, then it wouldn't be a surplus, would it? It's precisely when no one has any idea how to deploy something that people have to start experimenting with it, in order for the surplus to get integrated, and the course of that integration can transform society.
The early phase for taking advantage of this cognitive surplus, the phase I think we're still in, is all special cases. The physics of participation is much more like the physics of weather than it is like the physics of gravity. We know all the forces that combine to make these kinds of things work: there's an interesting community over here, there's an interesting sharing model over there, those people are collaborating on open source software. But despite knowing the inputs, we can't predict the outputs yet because there's so much complexity.
See also:
Clay Shirky's Harvard talk: Here Comes Everybody
Clay Shirky's masterpiece: Here Comes Everybody
This is so true! Why has nobody said this before? It makes sense.
Yes, but how many of those hours are now used for reading blogs aimlessly or looking at captioned pictures of cats?
Mm. Considering the percentage of the project's total pages that are devoted to cartoons and Star Trek, I think Shirky might in fact have it backwards: if people didn't watch so much television, there might not be any wWkipedia at all.
People have definitely said it before, but that doesn't mean it doesn't make sense! Back in 94, a mainstream media group study showed that the average internet-connected home was watching 9 hours less TV per week. That's when the war against participatory media began.
But the war against cognitive surplus in America began, quite consciously, during the FDR administration. Cognitive surplus was seen as the first step towards worker unrest.
The idea for three fruit trees in every Levittown garden (supplied free) was specifically designed to use up men's time so that they wouldn't stray from home and organize.
"The Internet-connected population watches roughly a trillion hours of TV a year. That's about five times the size of the annual U.S. consumption. One per cent of that is 10,000 Wikipedia projects per year worth of participation."
Of the Internet-connected population, how many have heard of Wikipedia? Of that number, how many edit it? Of those, how many actually add new information, rather than fixing grammar mistakes?
The vast majority of people on the Internet are consumers, not producers. Even in terms of comments, I'd wager that the comment-to-pageview ratio, even excluding rss, is far below 1%. Saying that all this cognitive surplus is going to the advancement of the Internet is nonsense. People are just finding new diversions. Instead of watching Seinfeld, they watch YouTube.
Also, as far as the principle of "It's better to do something than to do nothing," that's rarely the case. Is it truly better for people to play WoW than to watch television? How so? Within the sphere of WoW, maybe, but from an outside perspective, it's very common for people to think, "Losers. Grown men sitting in their basement pretending to be elves." For people outside of that sphere, they are essentially doing nothing. It doesn't impact them, they can't associate; the people playing WoW are the only ones who see it as doing something. Finally got your epic mount? People who don't play WoW don't care. And this can be extended to many other areas that Shirky places high interest in: blogging, captioning cats, etc.
In fact, the reason that this use of cognitive surplus is on the rise isn't some grand awakening: the cognitive requirements for use have just been lowered to the point where "mere mortals" can gain entry. Blogging is just an extension of the personal homepage that's been around for over a decade. Now, though, you don't need to know HTML. You go to blogger.com, fill in some details, click some buttons, and you've got a homepage. Type your thoughts in a box, hit another button, and you're suddenly a blogger. Because of this lowered entry requirement, anyone can put anything online without regard for its quality or usefulness, and I fail to see how this is cognitive surplus being put to good use.
Oh, and the sitcom is dead because of reality TV. Just as many viewers, a fraction of the cost. Absolutely genius.
Some friends and I put together an index of wiki sites out there, and I hate to say it, but the congnitive surplus is being vacuumed up by people writing aimlessly on wikis about their TV shows. The English wikipedia comes out on top, obviously, but wikis about World of Warcraft, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Yu-Gi-Oh, and other time-sinks easily make the top 40 biggest and most active wikis out there:
wikindex.com
Most people are consumers. They watch TV and vegetate. Their participation is limited to online discussion forums of their favorite TV shows. Honestly, it creates work for the producers of art, content, invention, etc. I think the desire to produce vs. consume is in the fiber of each person and cannot be changed.
It is true that the internet has allowed the amateur producers to organize and create works that are much larger and significant than those which could have been made before the internet.
For those who are saying that the internet still lets us 'consume' to fill the cognitive surplus, perhaps it would be the difference between 'consuming' The Bernie Mac Show (the only sitcom I've seen in a few years, and which horrified me with its skewed outlook on family life) and consuming the Discovery channel.
However, there's another interesting force at work in TV, an even further dumbing down. Look at A&E, Bravo, The Learning Channel, The Discovery Channel, the Food Network. Look at what profiteering and reality television have done to all of these outposts of thoughtful and useful information. Look at what Bravo is now; it's the 'oh snap!' reality channel. Look at TLC and its macho "super big stuff and awesome motorcycles!" contingent.
The deeper issue Clay might be addressing is not so much the self-expression (wiki's) or even the need to interactivity ("where's the mouse"). The issue seems to be the slow awakening from mind-numbing brain-slushing. Been there, done that. Personally, I can't wait to see that happen more and more. Yes, it is a personal choice, but social interactions, at least for some, and especially teenagers, make them almost HAVE to watch the crap that is poored over all our heads. Thumbs up.
My favourite quote:
I have followed Clay for a long time and he is definitely onto something here. Sitcoms are a kind of mindless activity, the Internet will surely continue to suck cycles from this space. Sure blog surfing is at times mindless as well, but some percentage of surfers are commenting, writing their own blogs, creating videos, etc. Here comes everybody indeed.
The economics behind the "participation economy" was laid out by Benkler in "Wealth of Networks." His take on the "invisible hand." This invisible hand is fueled by "excess cycles" and that is the primary economic force that underpins open source software. Yochai uses several cases studies that are quite informative on this topic. The PDF is available here: http://www.benkler.org/Benkler_Wealth_of_Networks.pdf
This is interesting: in China, their 5th Annual Readership Survey shows newspapers and magazines still on top, but the Internet has replaced books as #3:
http://www.techblog86.com/?p=104
I quit watching television in 1975 and since then have consumed less than 1% as much as the typical American. Probably much less. I think this has made my life different. I've read much more. I've watched a ton of movies. I have hobbies that I'm deeply into. Solitary ones and ones in which I participate live and online with other people.
One big difference is a sort of social disconnection due to lack of common cultural references. You would interact differently with someone who had seen no more than a handful of hours of The Simpsons, Seinfeld, Happy Days, Star Trek (other than the original series) and other widely known shows. The common experiences of television provides a framework of references for people to understand strangers of the same culture in some ways.
I think that started to erode somewhat as cable became widely available and there were more than 3 channels for everyone to watch. But the most popular shows are still widely influential upon the population.
Wow, what a bunch of cynical comments.
Technology has removed three critical barriers to participation: entry cost (cost to make and host video, for example), ease of learning (access to helpful communities or just the internet in general), and distribution. Participation goes up, but then everyone complains we'll drown in crummy content.
Not really, because the next problem that arises as a direct result of the first three being solved - navigating content to find stuff you want to see - is already getting very easy. 90% of art on DeviantArt is poor, but I spend 90% of my time browsing it looking at great stuff, thanks to the smart way they put it together, which incidentally (along with all the others doing this stuff - YouTube, Amazon, etc etc) leverages these 'lesser' forms of participation such as rating something or even just *looking at it* to make it easier to find good content.
It's like a great big participation pyramid, and so far we're only one floor up from the ground. To begin with we just build on top of what we already have (i.e. wiki about TV shows), but as barriers to climbing are reduced and as the next generation starts to take all this for granted, we can get a feel for the incredible scale of this thing we're constructing.
"I was forced into the channel of media the way it was because it was the only option. Now it's not, and that's the big surprise. However lousy it is to sit in your basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal experience it's worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter."
Apples to oranges, there where ways to sink your time before the internet other then TV, sure the internet is good, diversity is good, having choices is good, but the tone of the article rubs me as saying "now that we have Oranges no sane person is going to eat Apples, and anyone who grows apples doesn't understand how f'n juicy and delicious Oranges are... what a bunch of twits! amiright?"
But we all know that Cory writes books, which where long ago replaced by radio, which was replaced by TV, which we are now being told is being replaced by the interbutt... to be fair he does say "It doesn't mean that we'll never sit around mindlessly watching Scrubs on the couch. It just means we'll do it less.", and that's the real rub of it. People who aren't going to join the internet culture anytime soon don't appreciate being told how amazing the mouse is, but almost no one frowns on more choices, I see it everywhere, and I'm pretty sure nearly everyone understands it.
Hell the question of who you would want to be stranded on an island with, Ginger vs Mary Ann, is just that, an eternal question of choice (http://youtube.com/watch?v=8wrEqsTJCmg). Mix and match other options, Xeni Jardin vs Starley Kine, as desired.
#5 David Bendit:
"The vast majority of people on the Internet are consumers, not producers. Even in terms of comments, I'd wager that the comment-to-pageview ratio, even excluding rss, is far below 1%. Saying that all this cognitive surplus is going to the advancement of the Internet is nonsense. People are just finding new diversions. Instead of watching Seinfeld, they watch YouTube."
This may be broadly true, but all it takes is a comparison of the ratio of producers to consumers between television and the Internet to show that one medium invites more participation than the other.
Television is completely passive - you sit, you watch, you are given what the producer wants to give you and nothing more. There is no interaction between producer and consumer, unless you feel like writing a letter that no one will read.
The Internet provides an opportunity to interact with the producer, even if it's just posting a comment to tell him that his latest observation is 'teh suxx0rz'. By posting that comment, the consumer becomes a producer. Watching people get Rickrolled on YouTube may be no different from watching Seinfeld, but over time the YT consumer will create an account, leave a bunch of comments, and eventually produce their own videos.
In classic terms, a lot of Internet content seems scattered and chaotic. This, I'd argue, is because our classic media have been rigidly controlled and formatted in order to present a highly filtered view of reality. Real reality is a chaotic mess - that the Internet reflects this is a sure sign that something very organic and natural is taking place therein.
It's built on the premise that we could do "thinking" and "being creative" all the time. IMO, this is impossible - one needs downtime to be able to think again. Whether you watch TV or not.
@ DavidBendit5,
Now, though, you don't need to know HTML. You go to blogger.com, fill in some details, click some buttons, and you've got a homepage. Type your thoughts in a box, hit another button, and you're suddenly a blogger. Because of this lowered entry requirement, anyone can put anything online without regard for its quality or usefulness, and I fail to see how this is cognitive surplus being put to good use.
How is this bad use? How many clever writers should be expected to know HTML? Does the lack of knowledge of how to create their own portfolio site make the brilliant producers on DeviantArt any less skilled at art?
I'd argue that this is a leveling ground. The more websites and applications made to simplify interaction, the more the average Joe can do something with his talents. Sure, he may be not so talented, but if anything, the Internet is a democratic society in action. Yes, you have web providers being jerks, and site providers ruling with a heavy hand, but if that bothers the consumer they can go elsewhere and use other products. Then, as webmasters realize their sites are dying, they have to change if they want to fit the will of the people.
I know enough HTML to have coded my own webpage back in the day, etc. But just because I had some skills didn't mean the ramblings of a ten year old girl were any value. Webpages back in the nineties were no more clever than they are now. Maybe back in the eighties, but come on, you remember the flashing backgrounds and blaring .midis that characterize nineties websites (for me, anyway.)
It's all the vomit of society, and as vomit goes, it's pretty okay.
Once, as a lad, I realized that time spent watching television could be measured in hours per viewer per day, and with a little more math, that amount could be translated to human lifetimes in wasted hours.
That 200 billion hours per year computes to 526,315 lifetimes worth of waking time, unless there was some error in my math.
This is kind of like the RIAAs logic of aguing that X number of downloaded songs is the same as x dollars in lost revenue.
Just because people aren't watching tv doesn't mean they will do something creative with that time.
Growing up in the 1970's, I had a fairly healthy appetite for science fiction television and to be honest it was all I'd watch. Then my stepfather introduced me to the joys of PBS, the evening news and "60 Minutes". By the time we got cable, I'd spend dozens of hours vegetating in front of the tube.
Since the 1990's, though, I started throttling back to the point where I barely watch television at all. I have absolutely no cultural reference points in day to day conversation at work, but my god how I write! I also paint, have my tech hobbies and most importantly I have my astronomy (yes, yes, my dear, sacred visual astronomy, how I love thee...). Yes, I think Clay is onto something there...
MEH. this is a "just so" story. now, "cognitive capacity" is being taken up by unsubstantiated claims by prominent bloggers.
I wonder if maybe what we're seeing is something of a return to honorable amateurism, even if the overall quality of amateur production isn't all that high. I'm thinking of Twain's skewering of Emmeline Grangerford's artistic pretensions in Huckleberry Finn. Here's a 19th-century adolescent lowbrow who wrote absurdly sentimental poetry and drew inept, bathetic sketches ("Art thou gone yes thou art gone Alas!") On the other hand, Emmeline was at least taking part in some kind of art, like any number of hobbyist musicians and artists before the rise of Big Media.
For my money, middling creativity is still a notch above utter passivity (as long as I don't have to pretend to like your poetry).
Better to make something mediocre than to consume a superior product? I agree. Production pays benefits for the producer. Consumption merely fills a single need.
What's wrong with gin?
Thank you so much for the pointer to Shirky's transcript. It was incredibly encouraging.
Let's all remember to read the Onion article titled, "Area Man Constantly Mentioning He Doesn't Own A Television and cut down on the elitism.
Some people mention trading movies for TV, but what's the difference? There's plenty of crap movies and 2 hours of watching is still 2 hours watching something. Same can be said of the theatre, live music, etc.
We can even say the same thing about books. You're either reading just the classics (the merit of what makes them classic can be debated), or you're reading stuff that may or may not be crap. Is Mercedes Lackey or the latest Star Trek novel really better than TV? At least you only spend an hour on a bad TV show. Books take longer to read.
And then there's the internet. For every worthwhile blog post or discussion thread there's probably 50-100 inane posts about cat barf or flame wars. We can celebrate the creator, but these elitists who want us to kill our TVs will still look down their noses at the likes of pregnant Snape erotica or those LOLcat things the unenlightened masses drool over.
The fate of the internet is likely no different than any other medium. It'll be commercialized to a variable extent. It will expand and more of the average people will be drawn in as the barrier to entry is lowered. With all that audience more, and more varied content will be produced.
And now you have this great sea of content and we have the same problem as TV- One thousand channels, maybe a dozen really good shows, and a whole lot of leftovers of varying quality. Then you add all the filtering mechanisms to only get the "good" content. You might as well be reading TV Guide.
Those unwashed masses watching TV after a day at the office are the same masses that sat around the hearth telling re-runs about Zeus after a hard day building an aqueduct. The revered Shakespeare wrote for the TV of his time and wasn't critically acclaimed early on. I bet he even took a day off occasionally, especially once writing became his day-job.
So here I am. I've spent a bunch of time writing a reply in a discussion about a talk. Have I wasted this time? Was this expenditure any more noble than if I were contemplating the theme of a TV show? Is this just digital graffiti that may one day be praised because it managed to survive the passage of time where other hard drive sectors failed? Maybe I'm a dullard that spends his time behind a screen sharing his opinion when all the enlightened people know that the only true way is to shout it from the center of ye olde town square. It'll never end.
Maybe we should spend some of that cognitive surplus trying to get over ourselves.
@27 I don't think that all TV is crap or that reading is always an enlightened endeavor. I'm the non TV watcher and I can name a half dozen brilliant shows that were really meaningful to me. And a lot of literature is shallow and disposable.
However I do think that there are differences between the experiences. Reading is more involving to me. Many people also experience more involvement with the written word than with a sitcom. Ten people reading the same Time magazine article are probably having ten experiences that are more diverse than the same ten people watching The Simpsons*. Reading just uses the brain in a different way.
* brilliant.
#19 posted by Scott Wetterschneider:
Though it's kinda put into perspective by the fact that mankind is currently churning out 211,090 additional lifetimes (population increase) per day.Doing some quick calculations myself, the work capacity of all ants on earth amounts to 80,000,000,000,000,000,000 ant-hours per year. Humans are truly slackers, aren't we?
looking at captioned pictures of cats
My horrified reakshun. Let me sho u it.
http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/funny-pictures-orange-cat-consoles-human-lol.jpg
Hey, Antinous - don't knock the cats:
http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2008/03/08/the-cute-cat-theory-talk-at-etech/
Apropos Clay's title, couldn't help thinking of Hogarth:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gin_Lane
Gives a whole new dimension to "free as in beer"
(full text: http://yishaym.wordpress.com/2008/04/26/blog-street-and-tv-lane/)
and MP3 of Clay's talk @ the RSA (London)
http://www.rsa.org.uk/audio/lecture180308a.mp3
Watch out once Wikipedia is done (except for the talk pages). I've had a close eye on the music scene for the past ten years, and it's my firm conviction that there are now more bands than there are cars. Here comes the 10,000 Salieris!
#27 knifie_sp00nie
"Maybe we should spend some of that cognitive surplus trying to get over ourselves."
Indeed, you should take your own advice. I know that replying to something on BoingBoing by dripping it with cynicism is very tempting but it's no substitute for critical thought. I see this a lot here, BB posts something positive and then all the naysayers come out and piss all over it. It's tiresome.
"For every worthwhile blog post or discussion thread there's probably 50-100 inane posts about cat barf or flame wars."
You don't know that. (This is going to be a constant refrain of mine.) This is just your cynicism talking, it's your personal bias stepping in and inserting itself between you and your perceptions. True objectivity is very hard work because we all have our own personal agendas and biases. It is very easy for them to creep in and color our perceptions.
"And now you have this great sea of content and we have the same problem as TV- One thousand channels, maybe a dozen really good shows, and a whole lot of leftovers of varying quality. Then you add all the filtering mechanisms to only get the "good" content. You might as well be reading TV Guide."
This is just more of your pessimism creeping in. Have you seen the Battlestar Galactica wiki? Do you really think TV Guide even comes close? That's all fan content to BTW. In addition the internet is very unlike traditional media. It's searchable, it's customizable. It enables collaboration on a global scale. Even more, you can build intelligence into it.
I'm not saying, and I don't believe that Clay is saying that everyone will become content creators, but that many more will than would through traditional media. I don't know how old you are but I do remember when the only opinion or commentary available to me was through the local papers editorial pages or maybe the New Yorker. If I wanted to participate my only option was to write a letter to the editor.
There is no way I or most other people would want to return to that. I can barely listen to my local MPR station because... well, partly because they've been taken over by GOP filth but also because they don't really let me participate. All traditional media has this attitude where they are the holy priests who serve us unworthy masses our daily packet of official truth. That business model is dead and they know it.
I was defending the kittehs!
Wasted "cognitive capacity" can be easily twisted into just another excuse for the Man to squeeze every last ounce of work... I mean life, out of a Human Being in the name of enhancing shareholder value.
Of course, too much of anything isn't a good idea whether it's TV, reading, gaming, or sex... Maybe not sex. Anyway, what I'm getting at is playtime should be whatever you want it to be from knitting, to sitcom viewing so that you can rest and cognate better later. I think that a truly important catalyst for innovation is actually variety, and not what is subjectively being "wasted" while we rest.
knifie_sp00nie et al, the universal law of everything hasn't changed:
The difference is that we've changed, from passive consumers of 95% crap and 5% quality, to producers of the same. Which has several effects:
a) there's much more of everything, crap as well as quality.
b) both crap and quality are more diverse
c) ownership is distributed.
consequently, the half-life of crap is rapidly converging to 0, and the access we all have to quality is constantly growing.
Rushkoff - very interesting points. Any suggestions for further reading?
cognitive surplus? Who has time to think when there are TERRORISTS UNDER EVERY BED!!??
neat speech. Ignoring the 'science' parts, which might as well be completely made up, the web has completely changed the way I enjoy any type of media, and this change kind of explains them durn kids these days. Not that they're terrible, they just don't enjoy boredom as much as we did. Weird.
I really like that he puts a positive spin on it all - usually I read that the Internet is going to drown us all in extreme pornography or copyright infringement or some combination of the two.
Yes, I am a better person because of Internet. Thank you, Internet.
Takuan, you're a genius. What we need to keep America safe is a bunch of sitcoms that terrorists will watch. Once they're as sedated and occupied as we are, they'll have no time or energy for attacking us.
defendin ur kittehs 24 7
(but we must imagine the cat)
#34 Noen - Immensely well put. I was recoiling in my seat thinking about how to counter knife_spoonie's sour points but in a hundred tries I couldn't have said it better than the way you just did.
I'm surprised anyone who reads boingboing would actually use the term "elitism" as spoonie did in the first sentence of his post. Aren't we beyond that Newt Gingrich-era method of dismissing all critical thought? Who am I kidding, of course we're not.
At first I thought this was an amazing insight, but upon reflection and reading some of the comments, I've come to the conclusion that he's providing a new unit of measure with some useful observations.
Why I backed off my initial "amazing insight" take was that this idea is not new. Its just the 21st Century version of bread and circuses. Only that we have a lot more influence in terms of what kind of bread we're fed and what animals are in the circus.
At the time of the Renaissance it seems there was a lot of promise about man ultimately elevating himself on a personal level and, come to find out, give the average guy some free time and he won't elevate his mind, he'll just fine another way to stupify it.
That said, I'm all for it. I'm with Yish. Its still crap, but so what. Its better crap and for those who care, you can find more that is useful and valuable in it.
a bunch of sitcoms that terrorists will watch
They love Dallas. It's a fact.
@ Wrybread... so you dismiss spoonies dismissiveness by in turn using your own dismissiveness based on stereotype?
Sorry, but the irony kinda yelled out at me. Since these kind of discussions can turn into the an infinite looop, and you, in turn my complain about me dismissing your dismissing of someone elses dismissiveness, I'll just cut to the chase. YOUR BAND SUCKS. ;)
#46 Shane - Good point, but can you really blame me for cringing when someone calls reasoned discussion about the creative process "elitism"? Stereotype or not, that's a *very* common tactic by the Fox Newses of the world. In my opinion its a tactic to devalue critical thinking so we won't even bother trying. In other words its really dangerous and, in my opinion, evil, especially since it seems to work so well so often.
I'm not saying Spoonie sat back in his chair and said "hey look, there's some critical thinking going on.. That might result in increased creativity, I'd better bust out some accusations of elitism before this goes too far." But (again, according to my theory) what I am saying is that the Fox Newses have used this word to shoot down any opposition so often and so effectively that the Spoonie's of the world now do their work for them completely naturally.
They do this so often that its even become a stereotype...
And by the way you're also completely correct in saying that my band sucks...
Why do I get the feeling only about 4 people actually followed the link, read the speech, and processed its contents?
(As opposed, that is, to reading the summary, jumping o a conclusion about what Clay was saying based on the summary here, a few key words, and their own opinions about the issues they imagine him to be addressing - then filling in the popular pat answers to those assumptions, and posting this lack of analysis as a response.)
@ Wrybread... so you dismiss spoonies dismissiveness by in turn using your own dismissiveness based on stereotype?
Sorry, but the irony kinda yelled out at me. Since these kind of discussions can turn into the an infinite looop, and you, in turn my complain about me dismissing your dismissing of someone elses dismissiveness, I'll just cut to the chase. YOUR BAND SUCKS. ;)
#37: "95% of anything is crap."
Sir, please do your homework before you quote the great Theodore Sturgeon.
It's 90%. You've gone and halved the amount of non-crap in their world.
Hmmm... sorry about that double post. I was away from the desk for a while and did a refresh on the screen that said "thanks for posting (or whatever it says).
@Kennric, guilty as charged. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to read it yet, but maybe will so later.
@Wry, tx for the reply. I understand, I don't think he was Foxnewsing BB, rather, I think we can all admit there's a decent amount of snark on BB. I find a lot of the humor here especially to be very ... um... narrow in terms of the demographic. NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT. ;)
Oh, and to be a bit snarky myself, most internet debaters will tell you that's a fairly common logic fallacy (shoot the messenger or summat).
slashdot has picked this up btw; and there is a link there to a shirky talk at harvard -
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/2008/02/shirky
this one downloadable as video
From 1964:
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media
And all the video games in the world contain 100 million of Hours of playing (especially if you take into account MMOs like World of Warcraft and Everquest). And don't even get me started with the internet. Now if we step back and talk 'fun games' and 'useful websites' it drops to some where in the 1 to 100 million hour range.
I've watched a grand total of perhaps 10 hours of TV in the past 2 years. Not that I'm using that time constructively mind you......
I'm not sure I'm OK with the notion that I'm accountable to humanity as a whole for putting my "cognitive capacity" to its optimal use.
That way lies madness, or at least the Matrix.
Here's an idea: I'll watch TV if I feel like it, and I'll edit Wikipedia if I feel like doing that instead.
I've sat in front of the tube longer than some of the life times of some posters here.
95% of everything is crap because it's designed for the 95% of people with nothing going on in their heads (and only about half of them can blame a biological lack of intelligence, e.g. low IQ).
I would be really interested in finding out how many people have quit watching TV in the last five years.
After the "reality TV" boom, which coincided with my jumping ship from the family unit and moving on to my own life and academic pursuits I dropped TV completely.
I watch about 2-4 hours a month now when I am at other peoples houses, and the whole experience has become really foreign, flipping channels gets really tedious and it feels like there is an information overload... but all the information is along the same tract and very little of it actually provides any gratification.
I stopped watching TV three years ago when I realized that anything that made me agitated and depressed was inconsistent with my goal of being happy. I had gotten to the point where I wouldn't allow myself to watch anything but home makeover shows and re-runs of That 70s Show. It seems like everything on TV involves violent crime/autopsies or fake-looking people voting other fake-looking people off of a fake-looking something.
you have to multitask; have two lap tops going (one reference, one current task) TV on with sound off, radio on and print media strewn around with current library selections. You need remotes for everything and the music media library should be close at hand. Land line as well as cell of course nearby for meatworld factcheck. Possibly an extra few systems or monitors at least. Altar and knives as well.
@48 KENNRIC, this is the internet. qed. however, some people haven't even read Cory's summary - as illustrated by the contribution of links to Clay's Harvard talk.
I find it poetic that comments on Clay's blog are broken (http://www.herecomeseverybody.org/2008/04/comments-broken.html) and its really no big deal. Pub bell rung? take the conversation on to the next one down the street.
@50 Stefan Jones: mea culpa. and I didn't even know I was quoting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Sturgeon#Sturgeon.27s_Law
See, stick around and you learn something. Wouldn't get that on Archie.
The less TV you watch, the more the stupid parts annoy you. Quit for a month and you'll find yourself rolling your eyes at commercials that you would have ignored previously.
My problem with broadcast TV is the amount of it that you have to ignore to get what you want. The commercials and interruptions drive me nuts. I watch the good shows when they come out on DVD and I'm in charge of the scheduling, not a network.
I think music probably takes the place of TV in my life. Many people leave TV on and 'ignore it' while they do something else. I can't do that. Moving pictures in a box constantly grab my attention. But I have music playing for all but about 4 waking hours a day.
"95% of everything is crap."
Should be changed to: 95% of everything is stuff I don't like. Since the universe only exists to serve me and my ego everything that I don't like but that you do is therefore crap.
On the other hand it is all one big time sink and I need to curtail the amount of time I spend surfing and do some productive stuff. Yeah, any day now I'll get to it.
@#58 posted by Conservationist , April 27, 2008 3:11 PM
Half of people lack intelligence due to biology? is that a joke, an assumption, or based on an actual study across thousands of people and millions of genetic markers? I for one don't believe anyone should even remotely be considering that -ever-
Let me try to expand on my post some. I've drawn some attention. The internet must be working, or failing depending on your point of view. In the great sea of content, I've managed to stand out in this puddle for a brief second. Would that mean that whatever I wrote, wrong or right, has been more thought provoking or at least entertaining? That I warranted replies mean that my words had more value when considering the interaction as a whole?
I'd say that Fox news learned a thing or two from the internet and not the other way around. Love it or hate it, the inflamatory gets attention over the most well-reasoned statement. So when I write on discussion boards, I paint with a broad brush and prefer to get some sort of validation for my effort.
And that leads into a big aspect of having so many producers. Do we all do it for just the fullfilment? I honestly hope we get there some day, but despite the promises of the newsreels, robots and computers have not reduced the amount of time I spend at work. Then I go maintain a household, maintain my body, and hope I have enough energy left over to do something more worthwhile than watch TV.
Sometimes the waking sleep of TV is all I can handle. If we want to equate down time with wasting brain cycles, then where do you draw the line? Is 8 hours of sleep too much when 4 will keep you alive? REM sleep lights up more of the brain than reading, arguably making it a superior activity, but then most people go and waste the time by not recalling all of their dreams.
If we were a monoculture we'd get even more done because we wouldn't be wasting time arguing about Bush vs. everyone or which version of Dungeons and Dragons is the best. Why do we draw the arbitrary line at TV? You can't have YouTube without the original tube.
Elitism... Sure. What else can you call it when you judge someone else's choices that don't impinge on you? We can talk about 95% crap and almost never reach consensus on what 95% is actually crap. We can all cite our IQ scores and feel smug, but history will forget almost all of us.
I'm potentially just as good a writer or better than Cory Doctorow. The difference is that he has the drive or ego or whatever to consistently put himself out there and never stop. I took the easy route and got a cushy IT job. Five percent of the world thinking you're talented is a huge number, but 95% thinking you make crap is even larger. If we want to encourage open contribution, then we should probably stop being so harsh in our criticism.
I really wasn't trying to argue that TV is better or worse than reading a book or crocheting genitalia, just that any medium can suffer from mediocrity and the new thing isn't without flaws. I'm on the side of creativity over TV, but the notion that I'm wasting time by not working to my full potential is a demon that keeps me up at night and ultimately, from being creative.
There's nothing new under the sun, including this debate.
Is it a cognitive surplus or a mere attentive surplus? There is a lot more to cognition than attention, and yet the arguments here seem to be more about where people's attention is focussed than anything else.
This makes sense inasmuch as primate societies tend to be ordered by attention. That is, the alpha monkey isn't necessarily the biggest or strongest or toughest, but is the one that is most successful in commanding the troop's attention. Where and how we allocate our attention is a fundamental determinant of our social structure.
The 'Net makes it very, very difficult for a small number of voices to dominate everyone's attention they way the old media did.
But to pretend that there is much cognition going on here would be a mistake.
One measure of cognitive activity is how often someone changes their mind about something. In over a decade of active participation in a variety of forums I have seen very few instances of anyone changing their mind about anything substantive. That is, cases where there is a disagreement on a substantive issue, followed by a discussion or argument, followed by a resolution where one party has convinced the other or both have reached a different consensus view.
This suggests that while there is a great deal of activity on the 'Net, there is very little cognitive activity.
It's worth noting that, while sitcoms were produced assuming passive consumption, the viewers weren't always being passive -- the extensive fanwikis of today are only the latest manifestation of fans appropriating and building on "passive" entertainment. (See also fan fiction, just for starters, which was around long before the Internet.) Even viewers of fairly formulaic TV shows like Law and Order develop complex relationships with the characters in them. Even small variation in the presentation of the characters over time gets layered, again and again, in kind of a palimpsest, building something much more complex in repetition than could ever be built with a single, extremely nuanced presentation. (Have you ever watched a movie over and over, finding more in it each time? The same thing happens with successive episodes of a television show.)
Ironically, I've found that when -- as I have lately -- I want an easily-discretized form of entertainment which is engaging but not too engaging, the Internet has me watching more television than I used to and not less. Partly it's about the people I'm around in real life and watching what they watch so I can share it with them, and partly it's about television finally starting to produce things I find it worthwhile to watch (ie. longer story arcs and more character depth), but mostly it's about Bittorrent making it easy to find the good stuff in a way that's viewable on my own terms. I'm engaging with the stuff I watch in all kinds of ways, though, and the Internet makes it much more a two-way street.
On the other hand it is all one big time sink
When someone tells me that they don't have enough time to do something which might be beneficial to them, I point out that we all have the same amount of hours in the day. We just have different priorities for how to occupy them.
Half of people lack intelligence due to biology?
If you set the mean or the median or whatever you call it as the norm, then half the population gets to be called stupid. It's self-referential.
We can all cite our IQ scores and feel smug
Don't mention that in a WalMart thread. It would be mean.
Dear Tom
I change my mind constantly. I just never admit it.
knifie_sp00nie
"Would that mean that whatever I wrote, wrong or right, has been more thought provoking or at least entertaining?"
Yes, that would be it. There was no animosity on my part. Hope you understand that I was just replying to someone who was WRONG on the internet. ;)
"Then I go maintain a household, maintain my body, and hope I have enough energy left over to do something more worthwhile than watch TV."
Meh... you have a body? Lucky you, all I have is this vat here and once in a while I can hear the bubbles as they gently massage my brain tissue. Bastard.
"I'm potentially just as good a writer or better than Cory Doctorow."
You are also potentially food for Cthulhu but I wouldn't go around saying that too loudly. He's bound to hear you and you could end up in a vat. You'll have to get one of your own, I've got no room in here for you.
Tom says:
"while there is a great deal of activity on the 'Net, there is very little cognitive activity."
Oh sure but how would us neurons know what the great hive mind is thinking? Oh wait... here comes another cascade.... hummm, maybe that was "hive mind can haz kitteh?"
I change my mind constantly. I just never admit it.
Why? There's no nobler quality. When one realizes that one's own opinions might change with the morrow, it's impossible to be dogmatic about other people's opinions.
I used to, but it just confuses people
"In over a decade of active participation in a variety of forums I have seen very few instances of anyone changing their mind about anything substantive. "
This insight is the reason why I've decided that writing must include propaganda to be effective.
"propaganda" is such a tawdry word. I prefer "the revealed wisdom of myself, granted to the needy".
Hmm, I don't like propaganda. No, wait, yes I do!
Wait... I just changed my mind.
"I have seen very few instances of anyone changing their mind...""I change my mind constantly...""When one realizes that one's own opinions might change with the morrow, blah, blah blah"
When different opinions are expressed, others may suspect you are talking, on the morrrow, out of your butt! I believe Ben Franklin said that, or maybe it was Jesús.
Thanks for your seminal contribution to the discussion.
would you like a tissue?
Ponder the source, not the emission.
I just went back to read in detail the lecture transcript, which I had skimmed before. The guy is FUNNY. I'm putting this book on my to-get list.
"(T)he only thing society could do to manage was to drink itself into a stupor for a generation. The stories from that era are amazing-- there were gin pushcarts working their way through the streets of London. "
Now there's a job for me: Pushcart Gin Vendor.
If you don't like the connotations of "propaganda", think instead in terms of neuro-linguistic-programming, or seduction, or poetic resonance, or emotionally gripping narrative. Since rationality rarely moves opinion, we must marshall all forces.
Go look up the history of alcohol consumption in America. You may be quite surprised at the volume per person a century or so ago.
Okay, just a minute. Jeepers. I didn't know there'd be a quiz...
Okay. Here you go: US alcohol consumption per capita, 1850 - 2005
http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/Resources/DatabaseResources/QuickFacts/AlcoholSales/consum01.htm