Mining the Cognitive Surplus

Clay Shirky has been giving talks on his book Here Comes Everybody — his "masterpiece," per Cory Doctorow — and BoingBoing picks up one of them, from the Web 2.0 conference. Shirky has come up with a quantification of the attention that TV has been absorbing for more than half a century. Shirky defines as a unit of attention "the Wikipedia": 100 million person-hours of thought. As a society we have been burning 2,000 Wikipedias per year watching mostly sitcoms. We're stopping now. Here's a video of another information-dense Shirky talk, this one at Harvard.

Comments

Fascinating

[26199]

I was going to make a comment about such statistics being next to meaningless. ("What if nobody watched TV" is similar to "what if we didn't have any wars" or "what if all religions suddenly settled their differences"). Then I RTFA. And I'm not entirely convinced but I really hope he's right.

He making a compelling case for the end of the TV era. Can you feel it coming? Just think what it might mean...

Re:Fascinating

[lunaticLT]

My pokemans! Let me show you them!

Re:Fascinating

[physburn]

Thats some pretty hefty statistics 1% less telly per year, equals 10,000 wikipedias. And while we all have plenty of veg time, when we don't have the energy to do anything else, most of us could easily spare much more than that. The trouble is of course, I'm not sure society or human knowledge as that much space for the average person to be productive to human knowledge. If all those extra hour went to Wikipedia it would need to get 10,000 times more specific (would it be easy to trade off for accuracy here), at lot of fields of human knowledge don't go that deep.

Re:Fascinating

[Anonymous Coward]

The age of mediocrity. The irony is that TV makers brought it onto themselves by constantly lowering standards. The overall productivity of millions of people might topple the productivity of a couple thousand professionals, but it comes at the cost of having to deal with mediocre performance in order to not turn off contributors. If something good comes of it, I would like it to be that professionals realize that their only chance is quality, not finding ever cheaper ways to produce filler.

Re:Fascinating

[LaskoVortex]

And I'm not entirely convinced but I really hope he's right.

He's right and his proof was made before he wrote the article, evidenced by the existence of Wikipedia itself. For this one project alone, 1/10,000 of the cognitive surplus of one year has already been harvested.

He['s] making a compelling case for the end of the TV era.

One can only hope. The TV is last century technology. It brought information into the collective consciousness. Computers and the internet will likely prove to be as powerful this century.

His major point is that TV is a 1-way collective technology while computers are a 2-way collective technology. So, while advertisers and TV companies guided collective thought for the second half of last century, the internet makes it possible for the masses to guide collective thought today. Hopefully the trend will go in this direction. Only legislation could reverse it.

Re:Fascinating

[kestasjk]

I don't know anyone that still watches TV like people used to in the 90s. I haven't rtfa'd yet, but if he's saying that those hours will be put to good use now that we're not watching sitcoms I'm not so hopeful; it's not like you can't waste time on the net, that's all a lot of people (most?) use it for.

Re:Fascinating

[bgillespie]

Hey! This guy knows!

But in all seriousness, I bet that this article is on to something. In decades past, television has had ubiquitous popularity simply because it's so easy and accessible. But the new availability of quick and easy outlets for creativity is going to enable a shift. In particular, those who aren't already caught up in the status quo will probably tend towards the more interactive and dynamic forms of media.

I know that I personally don't watch television regularly, and I'm guessing that many others are the same way.

Re:Fascinating

[athmanb]

He's probably right, the TV era is going away and getting replaced with the MMORPG era.

Not that it makes any difference whether we waste our time on soap operas or getting epix though.

Re:Fascinating

[kestasjk]

(Depends on your definition of "waste" though, are sitcoms a waste if you enjoy them?)

Re:Fascinating

[Artraze]

Let's just suppose he is right; we just get rid of TV. Now what? He acts like removing TV will cause all the time that was devoted to it to be channeled into more productive things, like Wikipedia. Which isn't even to say society would benefit from that at all. Do we really even want the legions of people with IQ 100 to have more time on their hands? Which isn't to say slow people don't have value, but they aren't really capable of advancing society much.

Besides, TV _is_ dieing. But it's being replaced by gossip blogs and video games. Things like WoW eat more hours than TV, and the people wasting time on them are usually the ones that could make valuable contributions to things like Wikipedia and FOSS.

So let's then take away TV, games, YouTube, blogs, and all that stuff. And what will people do with their extra time? Drink gin. These people aren't wasting time because of TV; they're wasting it because they _want_ to. And taking away their 'fun' will simply cause them to waste time some other way.

Re:Fascinating

[Original Replica]

The irony is that TV makers brought it onto themselves by constantly lowering standards.

I don't think that's true. Compare a season of "Heroes" to a season of "A-Team" or "Night Rider". Look at the quality progression of "Star Trek" "Star Trek:the Next Generation" "Battlestar Galactica". I think television quality has migrated towards the extremes, there is some television that is very good, and some that makes Charlie the Unicorn look brilliant. I'm hoping that the rise of YouTube is going to be the end of reality TV.

Re:Fascinating

[maxume]

You are either young or you have aged poorly.

Smart always helps, but successful people are passionate and driven more than they are good at tests.

Re:Fascinating

[Anonymous Coward]

He's right and his proof was made before he wrote the article, evidenced by the existence of Wikipedia itself. For this one project alone, 1/10,000 of the cognitive surplus of one year has already been harvested. Right, because all of the mental effort that went into creating Wikipedia was taken from the mental effort that was wasted by watching TV, and not from anything else.

Seriously, do you even know what the word "proof" means? Your statement isn't based on any kind of fact so it may not even be true itself, much less prove anything else.

The article is based on two whopping unfounded assumptions:

- That this cognitive surplus even exists. It's possible that people simply have a finite amount of thought available per unit time and that this thought is already being completely expended. The fact that people in the past had much less free time is meaningless; they also had much less requirement for thought in their work and in their lives. Maybe a consequence of the move from mindless drones to modern thought-workers is that there isn't much thought left to be used in the free time created.

- That mental effort is interchangeable. This should be obviously false, not just unproven. It should be clear to anyone who has interacted with humans that when any kind of goal is at stake, some people's brains are vastly more effective at reaching it than others. If your goal is some physics problem, an hour of Albert Einstein's brain is probably worth more than the entire lifetime of that girl who made me a sandwich at the deli today. You can't say that there are X person-hours being wasted in front of the TV which could do awesome things if they were put to use elsewhere. These are not CPU cycles, you can't just load new software and go.

Now, overall I think that the guy's talk has a good point and tells a lot of truth. But it goes too far when talking about mental effort as if it were fungible, and there's no way that any of his conclusions are proven at all, much less by the mere existence of Wikipedia.

Re:Fascinating

[Culture20]

"What if nobody watched TV" is similar to "what if we didn't have any wars" [...] end of the TV era. Can you feel it coming? Just think what it might mean... The pessimist in me says that once people start having convictions and desires to do something again, we'll have a lot more war. TV ain't all bad; It's the _real_ opiate of the masses. Ever seen a Hollywood barroom brawl set in an opium den? It probably never escalated beyond two characters.

Re:Fascinating

[LaskoVortex]

It's possible that people simply have a finite amount of thought available per unit time

You are proof of this!

Re:Fascinating

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankly I was confused by the summary. What else is on?

Re:Fascinating

[David Gerard]

That's why this surplus is still a surplus.

Re:Fascinating

[David Gerard]

The key factor is: a technology is mature when you can get laid with it. Can you get laid watching Gilligan's Island? Can you get laid meeting people on the Internet?

Re:Fascinating

[David Gerard]

Stupid people will continue to be stupid, and smart people will have outlets. e.g. Clay Shirky gets people on Slashdot talking about him, rather than just sitting in his basement.

Re:Fascinating

[eikonos]

Why did you read the article? Just think how much time we could save if nobody read the article!

Re:Fascinating

[sir fer]

Improving the quality of TV is like improving the quality of shit...at the end of the day it's still shit.

Re:Fascinating

[globaljustin]

The article is based on two whopping unfounded assumptions:
- That this cognitive surplus even exists. It's possible that people simply have a finite amount of thought available per unit time and that this thought is already being completely expended.

I agree and I'd go further to say that any human thought that does not lead to productive action is useless in the context of making some point about any 'cognitive surplus' lost to TV viewing.

What's the difference if a construction worker spends his free time watching Blue Collar comedy tour or reading Sports Illustrated? Neither have any influence on his production, so any greater point about cognitive surplus wasted watching TV is meaninglesss.

The problem is Shirky didn't take a few things into account:

1. TV is analogous to several types of leisure activity. Any serious discussion of productivity or 'time' wasted watching TV much occur in the greater context of all the things people do when they are not working.

2. Depending a person's main area of work, watching TV may be helpful, even necessary for them to work effectively. This factor must be taken into account. A person working in TV production, music, journalism...hell even health care, religious work, and education could find legitimate and relevant information on television that will increase their productivity and therefore not be a "waste of time"

3. I can think of more, but I have an article to write, so I'd better not waste any more time posting about how this Shirky guy's ideas about wasted man hours watching TV are lacking basic support....ah irony

Re:Fascinating

[Anonymous Coward]

How could parent possibly be modded as troll? Someone please explain the trollish part because I honestly don't see it.

Re:Fascinating

[Anonymous Coward]

A truly stirring rebuttal. I bow to your obviously superior intellect.

Re:Fascinating

[Original Replica]

The problem is Shirky didn't take a few things into account:

Don't forget the problem of "50% of the people are below average" I don't mean that as any kind of insult, just an observation of reality. When you are talking about global scale projects like Wikipedia, the contributions that make it a valuable resource are the ones that come from people with expertise. That severely limits the number of people who can contribute meaningfully, a sort of self enforcing version of the adage "20% of the people do 80% of the work." That doesn't mean that everyone else can't contribute to society in a better way than watching TV but that the internet doesn't really open up a new world of possiblites. The best ways for the Average Joe to contribute have been around for quite some time: Big Brothers/Big Sisters, rebuilding the Gulf Coast, being a real part of you community, being an involved parent. These are all things that most everyone can do, but that often lose out to TV.

Re:Fascinating

[Anonymous Coward]

A truly stirring rebuttal.

I think it was meant to be funny.

Re:Fascinating

[LaskoVortex]

Don't forget the problem of "50% of the people are below average" I don't mean that as any kind of insult, just an observation of reality.

Yes, but the number of people who can make a contribution of any value depends on the tightness of that distribution. If it is possible to generate a measurement of "potential to contribute", I suspect the distribution of it would be fairly tight, especially if you measure intelligence using the greatest possible parameter space. For instance, what might be the metric to determine how greatly someone can contribute to the site colourlovers.com? How does one weight this metric with others, such as mathematical, musical, or literary aptitude? When one takes the entire parameter space into account, what distribution does one get for the population as a whole? I think it boils down to opportunity. As more opportunities to contribute avail themselves on the internet, we will see more benefits from the cognitive surplus.

Re:Fascinating

[hxnwix]

It's possible that people simply have a finite amount of thought available per unit time and that this thought is already being completely expended Have you ever been compelled to work when you would rather have been watching TV? Did the additional work retroactively destroy earlier work?

More to the point, surely the amount of time you engage in non-passive activities varies over both short and long term intervals. For example, many watch more TV in the summer than during the school year. Does the ability to toil diminish in the summer? You could argue that students would burn out without a multiple month vacation - but summer break doesn't exist in many countries.

That mental effort is interchangeable. This should be obviously false, not just unproven. It should be clear to anyone who has interacted with humans that when any kind of goal is at stake, some people's brains are vastly more effective at reaching it than others. Imagine how many potential Einsteins wasted their lives watching TV...

Re:Fascinating

[geekboy642]

Can you get laid watching Gilligan's Island?

I suppose if it was the right girl, and she happened to have an island fetish...maybe.

Can you get laid meeting people on the Internet?

Well, yes, duh. But it'll be a 45-year-old FBI agent pretending to be that hawtie sweet-16 camgirl.

Re:Fascinating

[LaskoVortex]

Seriously, do you even know what the word "proof" means?

From American Heritage: evidence or argument helping to establish a fact or truth of a statement.

My reference to the existence of wikipedia, though not fulfilling the rigorous mathematical definition of "proof" you learned in geometry class, does fulfill the first definition in American Heritage as I have used it (note the word "argument" in the AH definition). Perhaps you should look up words in the dictionary before you attack people for using them improperly. Of course a better policy would be to restrain from attacking based on usage to minimize the potential for getting corrected yourself.

Re:Fascinating

[ceoyoyo]

I agree with you he has an interesting point, but he's built it up in the wrong direction. People are not machines. You can't just work them all the time. They either die earlier, work less effectively or go insane.

TV lets you switch gears from what you did all day. I don't know anybody who works all day in an office who wants to come home and... do more office stuff. You need to switch gears. People used to work in the field or factory all day, then come home and read. Now that we read all day, we want to come home and do something different.

There are a few people who can go home and write decent blogs, or make good videos of things. A few. MOST of them tend to be either professionals (ie it's at least partly their job, the the article author), or they do it fairly short term and, if it doesn't become their job, they stop or at least slow down a lot.

I think he's got a point about the ads. They really are wasted. They don't help your mental recuperation and they certainly aren't productive.

Plus I don't know anyone who actually sits in front of the TV drooling. My TV is on, but I'm reading Slashdot and about to go do the dishes. My father was a teacher and used to mark in front of the TV. I know lots of people who turn the TV on and then have a nap.

Re:Fascinating

[node 3]

It's possible that people simply have a finite amount of thought available per unit time and that this thought is already being completely expended. No, that's not possible at all, aside from the pedantic (and useless) sense that "even one in a trillion trillion trillion means it's *possible*".

That mental effort is interchangeable. That's not what he's saying at all. He's not saying that there would be X more wikipedias, or anything else *specific*, just that there would be X more *somethings* of roughly a "wikipedia amount of effort".

Now, overall I think that the guy's talk has a good point and tells a lot of truth. But it goes too far when talking about mental effort as if it were fungible, and there's no way that any of his conclusions are proven at all, much less by the mere existence of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is just an example. The point is, though, that time spent watching television is pretty much universally unproductive.

So if you replace the time spent watching TV with time spent being productive, how can you *not* conclude that the overall productivity of that society will improve? You'd have to assume either people have spent all of their productivity already (which is absurd) or that they are replacing the unproductive time spent watching TV solely with some other unproductive activity, or a sufficiently un-gainful mix of productive activity and actively *counter-productive* time (i.e., they'd have to be actively *destroying* more than they are creating).

Aside from entering a coma, it's difficult to think of anything one can do that's less productive than watching TV. Therefore, the conclusion that TV time is taking away from potential productivity is completely reasonable.

Re:Fascinating

[node 3]

Just because those "sub-fiftypercenters" aren't making wikipedias does not mean their contributions to society are any less valuable, nor does it take away from the point that time spent watching TV is time spent *not* being productive.

Re:Fascinating

[roman_mir]

People seek entertainment. TV was the best entertainment until now, from now on something like MMORPG may as well take that role. However, there is an enormous difference between passive TV and active MMORPG (note that I don't play games, but I still understand this.) A game requires user input, some sort of a meaningful action to continue playing.

This gives me an idea.

Imagine a massively multi-player online environment that seems to be a game... but it is not really a game. What it actually is, is a collection of puzzles that need to be solved for the player to advance within the environment to distinguish him/her self from the rest of the players (really what games are), however in this game solving these 'puzzles' is a synonym to solving small pieces of a real life problem that is set up to be solved in small pieces. A problem that cannot be readily solved by tricky software, a problem that requires human thought and wide knowledge computers do not (currently) posses.

Now what you have is a super computer, using humans to solve a large problem broken into discrete pieces that are manageable enough by separate humans. In some cases some problems may require coordination between many humans.

The challenge then becomes to set up problems in such a manner that makes it possible for the problems to be solved by humans playing the game. At the same time the game must have characteristics of a real game environment that is interesting enough to incite players to solve these problems.

Whether in real life such setups are possible, this I cannot answer. I did not have enough time from 5 minutes ago to understand all the parameters of the problem, but if it is after all possible, then there is more than one reason to welcome the changes that are happening, with people moving from passive forms of entertainment to more actively involved forms of it, something that requires human touch.

Re:Fascinating

[vlad30]

Improving the quality of TV is like improving the quality of shit...at the end of the day it's still shit. yes but Good Shit (TM) will make things grow. Bad Shit (TM) just poisons the earth and eventually kills everything it touches

Re:Fascinating

[lessthan]

Sitting in front of the TV, do you do anything? Are you involved in anyway? No, of course not, the TV only goes one way. What I believe he is saying, is that by simply allowing the masses the tools to talk back, good is produced. The example that the author gave was lolcats. Are lolcats going to cure cancer? No. Are you going to see one that makes you spit coffee through your nose? Probably. That is a positive contribution to society and more than what we have been doing these sixty-odd years with TV.

Another point I think people are missing is that you are supposed to be having fun. If you are putting that bleak slave-like workday attitude into Wikipedia, you are doing it wrong. You are supposed to be contributing because you enjoy the sharing of knowledge, not just philosophically, but emotionally. If that isn't your thing, perhaps it is something else. The Internet provides other opportunities.

Re:Fascinating

[_Hellfire_]

The pessimist in me says that once people start having convictions and desires to do something again, we'll have a lot more war.

Perhaps if war was precipitated by populations having convictions and desires that ran contrary to other (usually neighboring) countries.

More often than not however, modern wars have been carefully and deliberately started as a strategic tool by governments independent of their citizens' wishes, using willing arms dealers that stand to make a lot of money out of the conflict (and provide fat kickbacks to the government in the process).

Diplomacy by other means and all that.

Re:Fascinating

[Handover Phist]

Two words. Carol Burnett. The enjoyment of a live broadcast of serious talent is different from that of a choreographed and well produced modern soap opera, but in my world, better.

And yes, Heroes, Lost, and Battlestar Galactica are modern soaps.

Re:Fascinating

[cbreaker]

I agree completely. TV has gone through a lot of changes, and I think that some of the best changes have been in the last six or seven years.

Prime Time shows, many of them at least, are now heavily serialized. Gone are the glory days of the sitcom; and thank goodness. Sitcoms are okay in small doses (ie Seinfeld) but they are becoming increasingly rare.

If you look at television as a whole, considering all 24 hours of service times all of the channels, then yea, there's usually nothing good on TV. But, there's some really great shows out there and the good ones keep getting better.

The idea that we're all wasting "Wikipedias" by watching TV is a misnomer. It assumes that if we weren't watching TV, we'd be studying the encyclopedia or other meaningful tasks. I watch TV at night for the exact opposite reason. I WANT to relax, sip on a glass of soda or wine, watch some TV, and go to bed.

Re:Fascinating

[cbreaker]

Yea.. and you don't own a TV, right? You're so trendy and hip that I think I'm going to puke.

And don't even try to tell me that things like YouTube make TV unnecessary, because if you think TV is shit, it's much, much worse on YouTube. I think I drop an IQ point every time I hit that site.

Re:Fascinating

[cbreaker]

Again, you're making the assumption that people WANT to always be involved in an interactive form of communication all the time.

The Internet is obviously important, and computers are already at least as "powerful" as a medium for communication.

I just don't see why both can't continue to co-exist. At the end of the day, I want to relax, sit comfortably on the couch, and watch some TV before I go to bed. I don't want to crouch in front of a computer screen all the time, and I don't want an interactive experience on my TV. I want to watch something entertaining and then go to bed.

The Internet, Computers, and Interactive communication will never replace the TV as a form of nighttime entertainment. Not until something like the Holodeck becomes a reality. It'll get bigger, more detailed, and shit, maybe 3D will become practical. But it will remain a 1-way form of communication.

Re:Fascinating

[globaljustin]

That doesn't mean that everyone else can't contribute to society in a better way than watching TV but that the internet doesn't really open up a new world of possiblites

I think I see your point. I wonder how the gradual merging of audio/visual media (we know as cable and broadcast TV) with the internet will do for the 50% you speak of? One assumes that they will just access the same alpha state-inducing 'content' via the web as they do on traditional TV.

I guess if we take your statement further, there could be something to the passive, consumption oriented delivery of AV media via television that encourages a certain type of passive, consumer-culture oriented lifestyle. In this context, I find myself wanting to increase the use of internet in schools beyond what we already have in most middle and upper class classrooms.

Re:Fascinating

[debatem1]

K, let me drop my few cents into this one:
1) Just 'cause you don't own a tv doesn't make you a dickwad... dickwad.
2) Youtube is a hodgepodge of entertainment, ranging from sheer brilliance to depths of stupidity that, in a just world, would be punishable by death and castration, not necessarily in that order. To call it *all* dumb, though, is not entirely fair.
3) TV isn't necessary, it's just currently more profitable. When somebody comes along and makes it easier to watch YouTube than ABC while you're eating dinner, it's probably the sign that TV is on its way out. This possibility scares the crap out of old media guys.
4) Amen about the Diggies.

Re:Fascinating

[Anonymous Coward]

Except when you get older, I understand some research says that those who used their brains more (as in reading / playing games / etc) have lesser chances to get diseases like Alzhiemer.

I have not really sat in front of the TV to watch broadcast channels for over 10 years now.

I do play games, do some coding, etc during my free time. Oh, I also read alot.

Re:Fascinating

[Hunter-Killer]

There are already instances of humans working on difficult (for computers) problems; unfortunately, it's people solving CAPTCHAs for free porn. :(

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/28/1344207&mode=thread&tid=111&tid=126&tid=172&tid=95

I think that the problem with your solution is that it'll be too difficult to monetize the output (MMOs instead profit from their userbase, not their efforts), which spammers have already accomplished.

Re:Fascinating

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah ... but this entire discussion presumes that life actually has meaning ... what if life is utterly meaningless, there is no afterlife, and hence, it doesn't matter whether you spend your entire life as Chauncey Gardner (in Being There) or as Einstein, pondering over the Great Problems Of Humanity. The guy watching TV while munching potato chips is comfortably numb and happy and one day falls dead, just like the feller across town trying to find the God particle.

Re:Fascinating

[risk one]

...Albert Einstein's brain is probably worth more than the entire lifetime of that girl who made me a sandwich at the deli today.

On the other hand... Einstein's sandwiches? Shit. (Not to mention his tits.)

Re:Fascinating

[OSXCPA]

Same old story, "XXX New medium is the future, while YYY is SO yesterday, it is obsolete and will be dead soon..."

People said this about books, radio, and now television.

Short answer, and I think this is consistent with TFA - some people respond well to quality information, whatever the form. The easier the format is to process in terms of availability and ease of use, the more people will use it. Some of those people will be idiots. The number of such idiots will rise as the format becomes easier to use. Smarter people will invent 'moderation' systems to regulate and classify idiocy, to keep the signal-to-noise ratio acceptable.

NPR ran a segment on Edward Murrow this past weekend, where he discussed the then new technology Television, and made many of the same observations. I recommend listening - what he said in the 1950's is absolutely relevant today.

http://www.bobedwardsradio.com/blog/2008/4/25/edward-r-murrows-centenary.html

Re:Fascinating

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the quality progression of "Star Trek" "Star Trek:the Next Generation" "Battlestar Galactica".

You just got to be kidding.

Re:Fascinating

[Anonymous Coward]

From American Heritage: evidence or argument helping to establish a fact or truth of a statement.

Would you please post a link to this definition? I have checked all the "American Heritage" definitions listed and none of them have this, instead they have "The evidence or argument that compels the mind to accept an assertion as true.".

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/proof
http://www.bartleby.com/61/65/P0596500.html

So, could you please link to the website and not just assume people aren't going to check to make sure you're not truncating and editing to support your point.

Like you obviously are, which is why I'll never see the link. You're lying and I caught you.

Re:Fascinating

[immcintosh]

The article is based on two whopping unfounded assumptions:

- That this cognitive surplus even exists. It's possible that people simply have a finite amount of thought available per unit time and that this thought is already being completely expended. The fact that people in the past had much less free time is meaningless; they also had much less requirement for thought in their work and in their lives. Maybe a consequence of the move from mindless drones to modern thought-workers is that there isn't much thought left to be used in the free time created.

- That mental effort is interchangeable. This should be obviously false, not just unproven. It should be clear to anyone who has interacted with humans that when any kind of goal is at stake, some people's brains are vastly more effective at reaching it than others. If your goal is some physics problem, an hour of Albert Einstein's brain is probably worth more than the entire lifetime of that girl who made me a sandwich at the deli today. You can't say that there are X person-hours being wasted in front of the TV which could do awesome things if they were put to use elsewhere. These are not CPU cycles, you can't just load new software and go.

I'm sorry but... what? Your argument seems itself to be founded on the assumption that sitting on the couch watching television is potentially the height of many peoples' cognitive capacity, which seems ludicrous to me. I'll provide you with a single, simple alternative to watching TV that anybody could engage in to a virtually unlimited degree, and which is almost universally more productive than sitting on the couch: hobbies.

I think it's fair to say that TV and hobbies are fairly interchangeable time-wise, and that hobbies are generally actually productive of something. Whether it's making art or music, gathering and categorizing knowledge (as in Wikipedia), or even many engineering-related hobbies many people enjoy (I myself am a hobby programmer after giving up on it as an enjoyable career), I think it's a very safe assumption to make that there are a number of viable alternatives to TV.

No, we aren't going to have millions of people working on theoretical physics, but that's probably for the best. It also doesn't mean that they won't be doing SOMETHING worthwhile with their time; you don't need a PhD to do useful things. Hell, just getting off their fat asses and going outside to engage in sports as hobbies would be a much more productive endeavor, although probably not exactly what the author here is imagining when he speaks of cognitive surplus.

Anyway, all that said, I'd have to strongly disagree with you on the nature of mental effort. While I myself enjoy participating in a number of hobbies as an alternative to watching TV--hobbies that I like to think of as being productive--I can't imagine a person who would not be likewise capable, barring severe biological disability. Whether people will choose to do so is the matter the author seems to be addressing, but whether they COULD as far as I'm concerned is fairly indisputible. So, while I'm not going to speak to whether I think he's proven any points, I don't think your arguments are very sound.

Re:Fascinating

[LaskoVortex]

You're lying and I caught you.

"The evidence or argument that compels the mind to accept an assertion as true."

First, how is that definition fundamentally different than the one I provided? Second, I'm not lying and you didn't "catch me". Diplomacy is not one of your strong points is it? Find a friend with a Mac with OS X 10.5.2, open the American Heritage dictionary that came with the OS, and type the word "proof". Don't forget to press [Enter].

Re:Fascinating

[Anguirel]

I disagree with the premise that all time spent watching TV is not productive. Even when watching shows which are not directly educational, it is time spent generating a common framework for discussion and discourse, it enables consideration of various hypothetical situations, and enhances the ability of people to consider various possibilities. Unless you consider all art appreciation and cultural achievement, along with most of philosophy, to be not productive in any sense.

You could as easily say "time spent reading is time spent *not* being productive" or "time spent talking about whether an Artificial Intelligence deserves rights and 'personhood' is time spent *not* being productive" -- which could be strictly speaking true (nothing is directly produced) but the indirect effects of those thoughts and discussions and things read, and shows watched can lead to very productive efforts.

Re:Fascinating

[node 3]

I disagree with the premise that all time spent watching TV is not productive. Only in a very useless loosening of that term. Even if you're in a coma, you could claim that the person is productive, after all, they are still producing carbon dioxide, and employing nurses, etc.

Let's put "productivity" into a scale from 0-10. You can't be alive and be at zero. Ten is a theoretical maximum which, due to mere inefficiency, can never be reached. Where would you put watching TV, on average? Sure, very rarely, watching TV could be pretty high, perhaps a 5-6, if you were learning or doing research, or playing through moral implications, etc., but most TV watching, even at it's best, would rarely reach a 2. Hell, 25% of TV is commercials, which is just about as close to zero as it gets.

Re:Fascinating

[cbreaker]

Well, I didn't use the word Dickwad. Although, c'mon. Most of the posers that claim they don't watch TV because it's all garbage are either: A) Lying, B) Too poor to buy cable, or C) Ignorant.

I did make a broad stroke argument against YouTube, and no, not everything on there is garbage. Just mostly anything you'll find by browsing YouTube itself. There's a lot of stuff on there that's not bad but you'll only find it via Google. And pretty much the longest clips are around 8 minutes, not exactly TV class entertainment if you have to keep finding something new every 5-10 minutes.

There's already almost very easy ways to watch YouTube on a TV just as easily as Television broadcasts, but it's not about the ease of use, it's about the content. While I already submit that most TV, if you look at all 24 hours and all the stations, has a lot of garbage; there's quite a bit of decent programming available.

Until a YouTube or something like it comes close to the production and writing quality of the good shows on TV, it'll never replace TV. Not to mention the fact that YouTube videos are very low resolution and we're all moving towards HDTV and surround sound..

Re:Fascinating

[debatem1]

Your first point about finding new content every few minutes, combined with the fact that most people don't have the technical know-how to use the solutions that would let them watch youtube on the TV, is what I mean by ease of use.

Nope.

[ScentCone]

I don't think that stopping the practice of watching long hours of re-ran Seinfeld episodes, so that you can spend even more hours writing and following links to various discussions and trivia about Seinfeld episodes and looking for places to download bootlegs of the same is an indication that, finally, all of that brainpower is getting put back to productive use.

Re:Nope.

[glitch23]

I don't think that stopping the practice of watching long hours of re-ran Seinfeld episodes, so that you can spend even more hours writing and following links to various discussions and trivia about Seinfeld episodes and looking for places to download bootlegs of the same is an indication that, finally, all of that brainpower is getting put back to productive use.

I actually don't think it necessarily should be something to worry about. As an example, I do watch re-runs of Seinfeld every weeknight. The side effect of this is that since I like the show it becomes entertainment to me and makes me laugh and in the end it makes me feel better. Who was it that said laughter is the best medicine? Sitcoms are supposed to be comedic and therefore be entertaining. Entertainment isn't directly supposed to be productive but it can make you feel better and therefore it can provide indirect productivity enhancements. Obviously those who do nothing but sit in front of the TV we may have to worry about but those people, I believe, are a minority.

Re:Nope.

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Sound point, but his argument is a little more subtle. Not all that brainpower will be put to constructive use, at least not in the next generation or two. But his order-of-magnitude calculations illustrate that rerouting just a tiny fraction of that brainpower makes for large social changes.

Re:Nope.

[ScentCone]

Entertainment isn't directly supposed to be productive

I'm certainly not going to debate that, and that's not my contention, here. I'm talking about the assertion that time spent online is somehow, by its nature, more productive than the time spent catching a broadcast or TiVo'd session of a sitcom. People want to be entertained, and they're going to find ways to spend time being entertained. From what I'm able to determine - anecdotally, of course - the generations that most recently grew up sitting in front of the TV and talking on land-lines with their peers are indeed different than the ones that are spending the same (or, I'd guess, wildly more) hours sitting in front of MySpace and IMing their friends. But only in trivial ways. And worse, actually - at least people who sat through a 30-minute sitcome narrative actually had their brains involved in following a story arc, however silly it might have been. The ADHD-ness of how that same time is now being spent is dramatically visible, and might even worsen the sort of productivity that comes from being able to concentrate for more than 30 seconds at a time on any one thing.

Re:Nope.

[CastrTroy]

Those kids who spend all their time IMing and MySpacing, and can't focus anything for more than 30 seconds will be perfectly suited to working in an office. According to the article I linked to, most office workers get interrupted every 3 minutes. So these kids who have no attention span will probably be much better adapted to working in such and environment.

Re:Nope.

[WaltBusterkeys]

People want to be entertained And there's nothing wrong with that. He thinks the "surplus" of time we have (beyond what's required to fill basic needs) should be used to create more knowledge. A lot of people--most, it seems--have voted with their behavior and decided that they'd rather use that "surplus" time to entertain themselves.

The point of human existence isn't just the creation of more knowledge. Sure, all else being equal, an activity that creates more knowledge is better than one that creates less. But, being entertained is a good in and of itself. Gaining pleasure from seeing something funny, or interesting, or beautiful is a good thing. We work hard so that we can be entertained.

He'd like everyone to have more sophisticated taste in entertainment, but who is he to judge? If Joe Sixpack enjoys watching Seinfeld, so be it. If it makes Joe Sixpack happy to watch TV then that's great! The world is one person happier for it. Not everyone prefers highbrow culture (his examples of "museums and public libraries") and it's very close to class-ist to suggest that anything but highbrow culture is a waste of time.

And don't pretend that people were once productive all the time. Storytelling has been around for as long as we have had language.

Re:Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm lurking 5 IRCs, checking some IMs, and got a dozen tabs open... Oh! And there's this really funny thing on YouTube! And I just saw that someone texted me. But I feel that I forgot something. Now what was that thing I was actually supposed to be doing?

Re:Nope.

[glitch23]

From what I'm able to determine - anecdotally, of course - the generations that most recently grew up sitting in front of the TV and talking on land-lines with their peers are indeed different than the ones that are spending the same (or, I'd guess, wildly more) hours sitting in front of MySpace and IMing their friends. But only in trivial ways. And worse, actually - at least people who sat through a 30-minute sitcome narrative actually had their brains involved in following a story arc, however silly it might have been. The ADHD-ness of how that same time is now being spent is dramatically visible, and might even worsen the sort of productivity that comes from being able to concentrate for more than 30 seconds at a time on any one thing.

Although I'm sure some people (Internet addicts as an example) lose productivity because they are glued to their computers all day, there are some people who it seems have been able to use the Internet as a better tool than TV. It may not be productive per se but the effects discussed here seem to show it does have some advantages for some people.

Re:Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, this is sadly true.

I'd be doing a lot better in my current job if I had a shorter attention span.

The technical aspects of my job aren't particularly difficult-- but managing the constant interruptions through a variety of media, some of which really DO need to be dealt with immediately, so I can't just ignore them, all in a noisy, harsh-white, florescent-lit environment...

There have been times when I've had something that required more concentration than is possible at work, where I've pretended to be "sick" as an excuse to work from home, just so that I can be moderately functional. "Sorry, no, I didn't get your e-mail until now-- I needed to lie down for a little while. So what is it you need?"

Posting AC since this is essentially a public confession that I'm not qualified to hold my current job, since it's been made clear to me that being able to deal with the environment of constant bombardment is definitely a solid job requirement...

Re:Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mate: quit! You only get one life.

Double-standards?

[CRCulver]

If, in defending the free exchange of media, we note that each "pirated" copy does not necessarily equal a lost sale, why should we think watching sitcoms necessarily equals lost useful effort?

Re:Double-standards?

[CastrTroy]

That's kind of what I thought. Just because you're not watching TV, doesn't mean you will be doing something productive. Maybe you would be reading a book instead. Is that really any more productive? Sure you could spend all that free time writing open source software, or composing symphonies, But people need some downtime. Some time to just sit and and relax, without trying to get anything accomplished.

Re:Double-standards?

[dnwq]

It doesn't - but since there are a fixed amount of hours which have to be spent doing something, we can make the argument that some of those sitcom-hours might be translated to some other effort.

Re:Double-standards?

[Narpak]

Just because you're not watching TV, doesn't mean you will be doing something productive. Maybe you would be reading a book instead. Is that really any more productive? Not really, but it is healthier apparently. I remember reading that reading or playing games (like chess) could decrease the likely hood of dements caused by old age. While TV, or other forms of passive entertainment, did not.

Of course since I "remember" reading about it, it's not really reliable information because I've watched more TV in my life then I can account for. Tried to find url to the data on this; but I forgot the url for goodle (or what's it called).

Re:Double-standards?

[maxume]

The argument isn't that the effort is lost, the argument is that the effort is available in staggering amounts.

Re:Double-standards?

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

The cognitive surplus may be low-grade ore, but a gold mine is economical even if there's only one ounce of gold per ton.

Re:Double-standards?

[magisterx]

You have an excellent point in that many people will find things that are as worthless as watching a sit com to do, and on the flip side some people might have time watching a sit com be useful. I for instance watch a lot of TV, more than I would care to admit to. But at the same time, most (not all) of that time is spent also doing something such as helping my wife with the dishes or helping her with the laundry or even reading the news. Its certainly not my most productive time, but neither is it completely wasted. But the point of the article and one I agree with is that if we devote even a small fraction of the time the nation spends just sitting and watching to TV to creating something, we could accomplish a lot. It doesn't mean killing TV any more than the rise of movies killed live performances. It just means spending a little bit less of it on pure TV.

Re:Double-standards?

[MrAndrews]

While I'd agree with you that there needs to be some downtime to help refresh one's brainpower, I think the question of "how much downtime" is the key.

I used to watch 2 hours of TV a night (which I believe is below the American average), and felt that after a hard day of work, it was nice to relax and just absorb for a while. But after recently giving up caffeine, I decided to see how many of my other "normal" activities were based on addiction too. So I gave up an hour of TV and tried to put it towards other uses (in this case, re-doing my office).

The first week was fine, the second week was hell, but by the end of the first month, I was actually adapted to not watching more than an hour every day. I had moved past working on my office, and was writing books again, debugging old code I hadn't touched in months. I had been ignoring productivity to indulge in something I could SWORN was essential to my mental stability.

I'm actually torn about this situation, because I make my living producing entertainment products that I hope people will mindlessly consume... but if we actually DO move beyond the old-fashioned paradigm, the hours I produce may have a harder time fitting into the "free time" the rest of the world has.

Someone should put some of their newly-acquired brainspace into finding a way to make TV more socially-and-interactively useful, so I don't have to worry so much.

Re:Double-standards?

[couchslug]

"I'm actually torn about this situation, because I make my living producing entertainment products that I hope people will mindlessly consume"

Why be torn? There will NEVER be a shortage of people ready to gobble mindless entertainment. What you do as a self-aware person doesn't mean fuck all to the drones, so make stuff that makes money for you and then enjoy the
power money gives you. You cannot (no one can) ensmarten the drones. Leave them to their American Idol and other comforting bullshit. They don't care what you want.

"Someone should put some of their newly-acquired brainspace into finding a way to make TV more socially-and-interactively useful, so I don't have to worry so much."

They did. It's called a computer.

Re:Double-standards?

[Anonymous Coward]

The cognitive surplus may be low-grade ore, but a gold mine is economical even if there's only one ounce of gold per ton. Yes, but the cyanide leach fields destroy thousands of acres. Better to let the TV and slashdot-refreshing people die out and replace them with a new and truly engaged sub-culture. In a decade or so they'll take over. The less you need the less they own you.

Excuse me, biff says I'm wanted (finally).

Re:Double-standards?

[ejecta]

The problem is however, there needs to be somewhere to use the cognitive surplus, just like gold it's useless if no one wants it or the surplus can't be matched with demand.

Heck, I've got ample free time right now yet have nothing constructive to do other than literally waste time so the surplus here is simply wasted.

Re:Double-standards?

[Peganthyrus]

I'm actually torn about this situation, because I make my living producing entertainment products that I hope people will mindlessly consume... but if we actually DO move beyond the old-fashioned paradigm, the hours I produce may have a harder time fitting into the "free time" the rest of the world has.

So how can you help make the entertainment products you create the kind of products that a selective consumer would choose to put in their one hour of $MINDLESS_ENTERTAINMENT a day? What distinguishes the shows you choose to watch in that one hour of nightly TV from the shows you decided you could live without?

Think about this in the hour you're not spending tranquilized in front of the boob tube; bring it up at work when you're in casual conversation. Maybe some of the other people at work will have some ideas, maybe you'll end up in a project you'll feel better about in the long run.

Re:Double-standards?

[Peganthyrus]

Nothing constructive to do?

write
draw
code
compose
sing

for its own sake. Make the world a little more interesting than it was five minutes ago, even if you're the only one who ever sees the results.

Re:Double-standards?

[ejecta]

For the sake of our planet, I'm not going to sing. ;)

I've just spent the last half our building a 'cranky' the crane out of LEGO for my boy (it towers an impressive 1 metre high with half metre crane arm complete with lego counterweight) but to me this sort of constructive action doesn't benefit the world at large. All my skills are basically spent doing things that in 1-2 days will be inconsequential to the world at large (beyond father-son relationship/family experience etc).

The options that I would like to dedicate myself to simply aren't available: helping the poor, helping eradicate world poverty, assisting with meaningful & large scale environmental improvement. Heck I'd enjoy making linux suitable for widespread desktop adoption but as the last thing I coded was in IBM BASIC that's just not a reality either.

So yeah, to me, making the world more interesting than it was 5 minutes ago doesn't really qualify as putting ones mind to use and the financial skills I possess are unused and therefore wasted so the surplus is lost as it's not matched with demand. Therefore I could be off watching tv all day and the world/society would be no worse off.

Re:Double-standards?

[MrAndrews]

You know, your wording has just given me the most mundane epiphany: the "drones" don't really WANT to do things better with their opportunities. If it's not pushed to their TVs (or computers, insofar as sites like Digg work) then they probably won't see it.

I was kinda despairing the fact that humankind is missing out on its full potential because people who might otherwise be curing cancer are too wrapped up in American Idol... but I guess that since there'll always be a market for escapism, I should be happy. It's a shallow happiness, though.

Re:Double-standards?

[MrAndrews]

(I'm going off on a tangent here)

The thing is, the it's so hard to push beyond $MINDLESS_ENTERTAINMENT... it's a strictly-defined variable that you can (at best) work to your limited advantage.

Most of the people I work with honestly want to make great TV, but the market doesn't really allow for it. You can't just do something with a beginning, middle and end... you need to think of a show that can fill 20+ episodes a season, and run for years. Anything less, and you're not going to get on the air.

The TV schedule is filled with great ideas that were spread so thin you can't see the quality anymore. In the industry, we're acutely aware that you have 3+ hours of free time to fill every night, and so we're working to fill the hours by any means necessary. Every night, every hour, every network needs something to play. Even the great shows you can think of, you can probably think of a few episodes where it really felt half-baked... and I bet you the writers who dreamed up those eps could see it coming as they started their first outline. They just had no choice about it.

Producers, writers, directors, actors, crews... they get locked into fresh ideas until the ideas go stale. Meanwhile, truly brilliant ideas that spring up are discarded because everyone is already tied up with other things. The lack of talent forces old ideas to stick around, and gradually (or exponentially) increases the value of $MINDLESS, and makes you feel like you really ARE wasting your life watching TV. It shouldn't be that way.

If every series had a set number of episodes (regardless of artificial season breaks) and when it was done, everyone went on to the next great idea, I think it'd be a lot more exciting for everyone. You'd have a constant refresh of the line-up, and you could really see each idea for what it started out as, not what it was stretched to become. As an audience member, I'd have a major dilemma picking my "must-see TV", but it'd be a great dilemma to have.

Re:Double-standards?

[ichigo 2.0]

Therefore I could be off watching tv all day and the world/society would be no worse off.

But your son would be worse off. And as he is part of the world/society, society would be worse off. Doing anything is infinitely better than doing nothing.

Re:Double-standards?

[CastrTroy]

I personally would love if TV shows only lasted 1 season. I think that Jericho really made that clear for me. While I would have liked maybe an extra 3-4 shows so they wouldn't have to end it so quickly and abruptly, I don't think it was ever the kind of show that could have lasted for 6 years. Same with Invasion. I wish they could have had an ending, but I really don't mind that it didn't. When you look at shows like CSI, Law And Order, and all the other shows that seem to be on the air for many years at a time, and even have multiple series based off the same premise, they all end up being very formulaic. You really do know what's going to happen in every show. Even if you can't guess the ending, it never really surprises you all that much.

Re:Double-standards?

[Peganthyrus]

I used to work in animation so I can understand. I've seen how things get watered down and focus-grouped into oblivion. It's part of why I drifted away from that industry to be a freelance artist who's making time for her own work. I may not be making much money but I'm tied up in projects that mean something to me.

Does this work for you now? I dunno. Will it work for you once you've done your time in the mines and saved enough to get out? I dunno. I managed but it was hard, it still is. I'm not part of the small army it takes to make a cartoon any more - so I can consider far bigger creative risks.

The hungry maw of endless channels and endless airtime always needs more. Best of luck in finding ways to fill it, ever so briefly, with things that matter to you.

Re:Double-standards?

[Peganthyrus]

Financial skills are certainly helpful in eradicating poverty and changing the environment; navigating the ever-more-complex world of money is a skill of its own. Got anyone in the area who's working towards something on those lines and needs some help with the money part of it?

And hell, you're raising a kid. If you sat there watching the TV five hours a day then you'd be setting an example of that being a good thing to do; he, too, might grow up to be a cog in some business who comes home to completely vegetate in front of the tube. But instead you spent a half hour solving the problem of building a crane with him, helping to give him some basic engineering skills. Maybe he'll do something cool with them a few decades down the line, maybe he won't - everything you expose him to is something he might end up with a world-changing level of passion for doing.

Re:Double-standards?

[Anonymous Coward]

ensmarten is a perfectly cromulent word

Wow

[NIckGorton]

Just wow.

My hippy-social-justice-queer-tree-hugging-dirt-worshipper self just did a little dance.

I would have RTFA...

[FlyByPC]

...but there's gotta be some "Must-See TV" that I'm missing. No time for boring ol' reading, is there?

Actually, I haven't had TV since January, and other than the Science Channel, I don't really miss it.

Re:I would have RTFA...

[NIckGorton]

Yeah, well I am not even certain what counts any more. Until I recently purchased one (due to the need for Wii access) I hadn't had a TV for almost a decade. But I now watch the Daily Show religiously on my laptop. Does that count as watching TV?

Re:I would have RTFA...

[Burz]

Daily Show is part of TV's problem. Part of me would just love to revel in all of the neocon-ridiculing, hipper-than-thou shtick; its a dangerous temptation.

Dangerous because A) it is 97% an expression of negativity... they tear-down all the right things but their ability to inform about positive trends and potentials is close to zero; and B) its still too much of a passive experience, where I am supposed to sit through stuff I already know because of the cute faces/personalities on display.

On the whole, I don't see devotees of Air America and Daily Show as being fundamentally healthier than outraged 'progressives' who hang on Rush Limbaugh's every word. The former group are still transfixed by doings of the cleptocrats to the exclusion of being able to think of alternatives.

Mass media is for the dogs.

Re:I would have RTFA...

[coastwalker]

Try the UC Berkley webcasts or Google tech talks, way more information dense than Science Channel.

Re:I would have RTFA...

[ceoyoyo]

How did you manage to only get the science channel? I unfortunately had to move while I was writing my thesis and didn't get around to getting the cable hooked up for a month or so. I pretty much memorized Blue Planet and Planet Earth during that month.

There's a reason it's called "vegging out"

[Anonymous Coward]

After a long day at work, many people don't want to think too much more. If there wasn't TV on, they'd probably just go to bed. People don't sleep enough anyway.

Maybe, maybe not

[AmazingRuss]

I've been without broadcast TV for 15 years or so, and I find plenty of other trivia to waste my time on. Lacking the daily homogenizing input, I am kind of awkward in conversation with strangers or casual acquaintances. I don't know any of the little catch phrases from the sitcoms, or what any of the sports teams are doing. It would do my social life a lot of good if I watched TV, but I just can't hack it.

I also think that it's a good thing a lot of these folks have the TV to watch. It gives them something to talk about, and keeps them inside, out of trouble. I don't think the infinite number of monkeys technique really applies to advancing human thought. If they're captivated by sitcoms, it's doubtful they are going to have much to contribute.

Re:Maybe, maybe not

[26199]

(How the heck did you get modded offtopic?)

I think part of his argument is that new things are coming along that are fundamentally different from TV ... even if they appeal at the same level of sophistication.

The difference being that they're interactive; and, however slowly, people might start to build something.

Eh. Who knows?

Re:Maybe, maybe not

[Anonymous Coward]

Could it be you seem awkward in conversation because you are a condescending arsehole and the conversation dies in your presence because other people just want you to fuck off? It sounds to me you just have no social skills and rather than address your own obvious weakness you prefer to blame everyone else for liking TV or sport.

Like whether you watch TV or not and what you watch if you do has any bearing on your usefulness as a human being. You could be the greatest humanitarian in the world who saves lives and changes the world yet think "Mr. Bean" is the height of comedy. You could be someone who refuses to watch TV and pontificates on the state of the world via the internet. Who is the most worth while human being?

Re:Maybe, maybe not

[Xelios]

"The difference being that they're interactive; and, however slowly, people might start to build something."

If the quality of the most popular TV shows right now is any indication...the thought of that something scares the shit out of me.

Re:Maybe, maybe not

[Concerned Onlooker]

"I don't know any of the little catch phrases from the sitcoms..."

So, get people to explain them to you. People love talking about their favorite shows. This is exactly what I do. I've been without TV since 1991 and I've never really felt out of the loop. If all your conversations must revolve around TV then that's a little limiting in itself. Reading a few blogs and news web sites is more than enough to keep you in the running with pop culture.

Many will defend various programs on TV and they may very well be right about certain shows, but in general I think TV is a black hole in your life, stealing your precious time.

Re:Maybe, maybe not

[Omniscious]

The difference being that they're interactive; and, however slowly, people might start to build something.

Some time ago i had a lot of fun proving formulas in natural deduction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_deduction). It is kinda like a game. There are some deduction rules (the game rules), with which i had to successively transform some given formulas (the starting line) into other formulas, with the goal to finally reach a predetermined conclusion (finish line).

It would be interesting to see a game, which hides the mathematical details, but harnesses the human intelligence of the player, so that by playing the game one would contribute to solving mathematical problems with useful applications.

Lika a multiplayer game, for example, where each client computer gets a function in two variables, with which the client computer can generate a visual landscape, the field of view being limited by computing resources. The players are distributed in a predetermined area. The goal is then to fight against the other players and to get to the highest point of the landscape whitin a time limit. This would approximate a solution to a maximum problem.

Of course, this is a bad example, because there are algorithms which do this job better, but you get the idea. (At least there would be more people willing to give their computing ressources, if the game is fun.)

It might be possible to solve decision or halting problems, if they are coded in some kind of interesting game, and if there are enough players.

Re:Maybe, maybe not

[andphi]

(In the manner of a slave on a Southern plantation right before the beginning of the American Civil War) Oh yes, massa. Yah ain't nuthin but right, massa. Us is too dumb and ain't got no use for readin or book-learnin'. Yah jes' go on readin' yer big fancy books an' runnin' yer great big plantation. We ain't need no freedom anyhow. We jes' go on singin' our songs and picking our fingers ta the bone on this here cotton. We jes' simple. We jes' dumb. We nuthin' but slaves. You right, massa. You ain't never wrong, no sir, ain't never wrong.

Note, this is not intended to be offensive to African-Americans, other descendants of slaves, or even to descendants of slave-holders. It is intended to shine a slightly different light on the PP's apparently boundless arrogance, self-satisfaction, and seemingly non-existent interest in inspiring mere Muggles to greatness or even marginal contribution.

Re:Maybe, maybe not

[AmazingRuss]

Goodness, such hate...feeling a bit insecure about your TV viewing habits?

I wasn't trying to say TV makes you stupid. I was saying that TV is a good way to keep stupid people out of trouble, and stupid people don't have much to contribute intellectually.

See what happened when you quit watching and went on the internet? :P

Re:Maybe, maybe not

[AmazingRuss]

You're correct...I should just ask, but to be honest, the only thing worse than having to watch some sitcom is having to sit through somebody breathlessly recounting it.

Re:Maybe, maybe not

[AmazingRuss]

You get out there and inspire the Muggles, and see where it gets you. Trying to push the back end of the bell curve into the front is very rarely a rewarding endeavor. As far as I'm concerned, the only way to deal with them is to be polite and get away as soon as possible...which is how I expect them to treat me too, given my ignorance of things that interest them.

I have an endless store of engineering trivia, others have an endless supply of pop culture trivia. It's not good, bad, or otherwise.

Re:Maybe, maybe not

[anagama]

Same here -- I gave up TV around 1993. I know exactly what you mean about being disconnected from pop culture but it hasn't really bothered me. After a few months without TV, I didn't miss it all because I had time to engage in hobbies and other things that interested me.

Unfortunately, I've discovered a new problem recently. I find my time dwindling again because in the last couple years, I've been spending way too much time online. While pre-93 I might surf channels all day hoping something good would come on -- now I'm surfing the web incessantly hoping there will be something good to read. I have to figure out how to restrain myself somehow, but this time it will be harder. I need a network connection to get linux distros and for help/documentation. Secondly, commercial free quality material is quite easy to get now thanks to DVDs, iTunes, and such. While my interests are very narrow in terms of TV content, I'm probably spending three or four hours per week on watching shows now. I'm really starting to notice how projects I have are languishing, and projects I want to do are being pushed further into the future.

Anyway -- I better get the heck of slashdot now and start my network time reduction.

Re:Maybe, maybe not

[AmazingRuss]

I have that problem too, periodically. I null route my favorite time wasting sites when it gets bad.

Re:Maybe, maybe not

[Veggiesama]

Lacking the daily homogenizing input, I am kind of awkward in conversation with strangers or casual acquaintances. I don't know any of the little catch phrases from the sitcoms, or what any of the sports teams are doing. It would do my social life a lot of good if I watched TV, but I just can't hack it. If you find your social life suffering because you don't know current sitcom/sports trends, then I believe you have one of two options:

1. Read more books and news. Instead of "How 'bout those Yankees?", you can ask "How 'bout that Iraq?" Instead of "Did you see last night when...?", you can ask "Did you know that I want to make sweet love to a robot?"

2. If that doesn't work, keep nodding your head and saying "ah." Make new friends on the Internet ASAP.

Elitist? Yes, without a doubt. But really, people who read a lot (books, news, blogs, Slashdot, etc.) are on the whole a lot more interesting people to talk to. If you think that your social life is improved by chatting about sports scores and the last episode of Survivor, then by all means, immerse yourself in it.

But if you really want to impress people, you have to project an air of intelligence and good humor while at the same time remaining modest and inclusive.

If they're captivated by sitcoms, it's doubtful they are going to have much to contribute. Oh, your endless well of pessimism delights me.

Re:Maybe, maybe not

[anagama]

Wow. He wasn't pontificating -- he was discussing his personal experience with not watching TV for an extended period in the context of a topic related to how TV wastes resources. He brought a perfectly relevant perspective -- not a sermon.

I'm also a TV refusenik, and while I don't know if the GP is like me, I do know I don't go around willy nilly saying "I don't watch TV". It comes up from time to time when someone alludes to something I've never seen, so I'll have to ask for clarification, but I'm not pontificating in any way.

What amazes me is that a small number of people get so defensive about TV viewing habits, as if my refusal to engage (*) is some sort of personal attack. Everyone should spend their time how they want to, but I suspect that those who get defensive about how they spend their time, have some internal voice telling them they should spend it differently. Either that or they're ridiculously hypersensitive.

(*) I should note, I am no longer completely TV free -- I do watch certain shows on DVD or iTunes. I am however, completely commercial free and for me, the time spent watching commercials felt utterly wasted -- it was the main reason I quit. I also had difficulty controlling how long I'd watch. When the content is not streamed constantly to my set, but I have to select and pay for it individually, it helps me be selective. If there's nothing to buy, I have nothing to watch. My current problem though, is spending too much time online. I need to work out a cure for that like I did for TV 15 years ago.

Re:Maybe, maybe not

[glittalogik]

I have an endless store of engineering trivia, others have an endless supply of pop culture trivia. It's not good, bad, or otherwise. Which of you would be more likely to end up on the B-Ark?

Re:Maybe, maybe not

[OSXCPA]

You were a muggle once, but something or someone somewhere introduced you to something that inspired you, unless you grew up in a cave and spontaneously imagined the wide world around you in all its glory. If no one inspired muggles, we'd all be muggles. Pity the first muggle-inspirer - she/he held up fire, and the rest of the muggles looked in awe, then killed him/her and probably ate them, but the fire thing stuck.

We've made some progress since then. There's no need to be condescending, nasty or even dismissive to people... ...unless you know them personally and they really deserve it.

Re:Maybe, maybe not

[andphi]

My wife is a college professor. Her whole function is to shift the bell curve and to inspire students. She teaches Freshman-level English composition. Over time, her students' papers do indeed improve. I cannot say that all of them improve or that all of those who improve do so vastly. Nor can I say that all students welcome the opportunity to grow. Those who steadfastly refuse to learn are a source of great frustration. In that, you are quite correct. Some students simply lack the motivation, or the academic foundation, to make the broad forward leaps some hope they'll make.

My point, however, is that the students who won't learn - or aren't currently equipped to learn - are not the end of the story. If one accepts the idea that writing is formalized thinking, the students who improve become not only better writers, but potentially better thinkers and more likely to contribute. My wife's students do not all go into academia or the hard sciences, but it is not necessary that they do. Even if they themselves to do not contribute directly to the intellectual life of the species, they may gain just enough love of learning to inspire their children. Alternatively, they may learn later in life that they really ought to have paid attention and so require that level of commmitment from their own children.

excellent spin on metafilter

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite aside from the breathtaking stupidity of the gin metaphor. I think this comment on the metafilter thread got his number: http://www.metafilter.com/71179/Looking-for-the-mouse

His premise seems to be that we're starting to see a shift away from pure mindless broadcast, and that's clear enough. However he undermines his point later on:

Maybe she's going back there to see if Dora is really back there or whatever.... "She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, "What you doing?" And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, "Looking for the mouse."

This guy must not have been subjected to hours and hours of Dora. Because every few minutes, an arrow pointer comes out, glides suspiciously smoothly to an item of interest, and then the television makes a clicking noise and a beep (a weird anachronistic PC Squeaker beep that hasn't come out of a computer in better than 10 years, but TV people love to show off cluelessness I guess). Dora is television that mimics the appearance of interactivity; it's not unreasonable for a four year-old to wonder what's making it do that.

I don't know that the example of a kid puzzling over television designed to sell game product really supports his thesis that a wane in TV's popularity is analogous to a fundamental change in human productivity. Instead it seems like he's discovered the startling concept of the hobby, and is pointing out that people can now form groups to support a hobby.

I'd be prepared to consider his thesis again, but imitating a politician's presentation of examples that have nothing to do with the premise is pretty off-putting. Yes, I know Chewbacca is a wookie already, what's that got to do with the price of packets in Paraguay?
posted by majick at 6:25 AM on April 27

Interesting Analysis

[rm999]

This is an interesting analysis of the distribution of users who contribute online:
http://www.tiara.org/blog/?p=272

I think the take-home message is that most people don't want to contribute much. The reason is obvious to me - after 40+ hours of working in a week, most people I know want to relax and not think much; passively watching TV is the perfect outlet.

Re:Interesting Analysis

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Wait until they discover that, as the proverb says, "a change of work is the best rest".

Re:Interesting Analysis

[Al Mutasim]

We work 40+ hard hours because we get measured and paid for performance. So the question is, how much are people willing to work and contribute outside the structure of traditional employment? He makes a good case that channeling just 1% of the time spent on TV would make a big difference, and I believe people are ready to contribute more than 1% to "productive" web-based leisure activities. So it's a big deal even in a tired world.

Re:Interesting Analysis

[1 a bee]

He argues in the article even a 1% drop of TV viewing hours redirected to collaborative output (multiplayer online games, forum discussions, such as this one, all count as *output*) can have transformative societal effects (about 1000 wikipedias / yr, if I read that correctly). So even a small shift away from pure couch potato consumption, to collaborative production (remember the online multiplayer game isn't worth a damn without the other players), he claims, represents a huge shift in societal output. And if this collaborative production thing actually snowballs, then the 1% estimate will seem a bit too tame..

Re:Interesting Analysis

[robertss]

That does make a lot of sense but if the "non-passive" activity provides the same relaxation factor then I think TV could be easily replaced with more interactive activities. Playing WoW for several hours everyday after work can seem like just another job but there is something about it that makes it just as relaxing as watching a sitcom.

Just kinda stopped watching..

[xtal]

I noticed a few months ago, I don't watch TV anymore. I'll buy DVDs and sit down and watch them, but there is too much interesting stuff going on now, and too many other things to do to sit there on the couch. Most of the programs are utterly asinine, and the good nuggets are all available through other media (DVD) now.

The most interesting thing is this is something that just sort of happened.. not something I set out to do. I think my cat might spend more time in front of the TV than I do.

Re:Just kinda stopped watching..

[ScrewMaster]

Most of the programs are utterly asinine, and the good nuggets are all available through other media (DVD) now.

Don't forget Bit Torrent. Every TV show on the air is available that way now. The problem is, even when the stuff is available for free I don't have much interest.

I've found pretty much the same thing happening to me. We have a big screen TV, but we really only use it for watching movies (Netflix, as it happens.) Broadcast TV programming is, by and large, worthless and what good stuff there is on cable/satellite doesn't really do it for me. Certainly I can't justify $60-$80 a month on it. Sure, there are the movie channels, I've found that a few DVDs each month from Netflix satisfies that need, and for a hell of a lot less money. Hi-Def is nice, to be sure, but until they drop the price of cable programming substantially I'm going to find much more productive things to do with my time.

You know, like posting on Slashdot.

Re:Just kinda stopped watching..

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here. TV just isn't interesting any more; I can get everything I want elsewhere and TV just isn't interesting now.

Re:Just kinda stopped watching..

[Lars512]

For my wife, TV is a very high priority, at least for particular shows. It's how she unwinds after work, and (sometimes) a fun way to socialise with friends. For me, when I sit in front of one for more than 2 mins, I start to get twitchy, almost like I can see the minutes of my life dripping down the drain.

Maybe about 10 years ago I started feeling like that. It actually can make unwinding together difficult for my wife and I since we both need different things. For me, I need something mentally active but different to my work to unwind.

This has been bothering me forever!

[kickmyassman]

Absolutely wonderful! This has been something that's been bothering me for the better part of four years. I felt odd when I wanted to do something, but it would mean that I'd miss out of the collective culture of watching TV.

Now I know why. We're moving on from TV, and you can't have both ideas at the same time. You can either do something or watch TV, and I for one want to do something.

I hope this guy is right.

Amusing ourselves to death

[Reader X]

Two things about Clay Shirky's critique of TV:

1. He's right.
2. He is pissing in the wind.

The Internet, and in particular Web 2.0 and the interactive/collaborative opportunities it creates, have pretty much already been coopted into the trivialization of thought and discourse. For every Wikipedia article there are hundreds of lame blog posts on boneheaded topics (including, for some of you, this one!). From an epistomological perspective, the Internet/television convergence is only accelerated by Web 2.0 technology, because the medium conditions us to behave trivially, a sizable fraction of people like it that way, and the economics of the medium tend to reinforce and extend that use.

The interested reader may also want to check out Neil Postmans's magnum opus on the death blow television has administered to our public discourse, written some twenty years ago.

"the Wikipedia"? no

[Punto]

What happened to "the Library of Congress"? now we have two different standards for the measurement of information for bullshit statistics?

How many Wikipedias in a Library of Congress?

Re:"the Wikipedia"? no

[Workaphobia]

No, no, a Library of Congress is a measurement of information quantity, and a Wikipedia is a measurement of attention; the dimensions are not equal at all.

However, 1e8 person * hours is an incredibly bad choice for the definition of a Wikipedia. Why not make it more metric, defining it to be something like 1 person * second of attention? Then the SI standard unit would be a megawikipedia, or MWp. This is equivalent to one person studying something for one and a half weeks, or all of America witnessing an event that lasts a third of a second.

Re:"the Wikipedia"? no

[FLEB]

Wikipedias (in this case) is a measure of collective time. The LoC is a measure of information quantity. It's two different units and systems.

Re:"the Wikipedia"? no

[FLEB]

It's two different units and systems.

Wait. Huh? Thought pattern flew off elsewhere... meant to say "It's two different things being measured".

Re:"the Wikipedia"? no

[Punto]

Because the library of congress appeared magically one day, without anyone spending any time to create it? I'm not saying it's the exact same unit, but if you're measuring "information/time", why not use the unit for "information" that you already have?

Re:"the Wikipedia"? no

[Workaphobia]

Because the wikipedia is not measuring information/time. It's measuring attention, i.e. time*person. For instance, you might spend an hour watching TV, or an hour assimilating all the knowledge these puny humans have ever discovered as you prepare your fleet for its impending victory over the pink apes.. Ahem.. But as long as you're the only one working on that task, the attention quantity remains the same, even though the information content is completely different.

Re:"the Wikipedia"? no

[Anonymous Coward]

I was gonna ask the same thing, but was to busy watching "When Farm Equipment Goes Bad XVIII"

Re:"the Wikipedia"? no

[Pogdranaut]

How many Wikipedias in a Library of Congress? About twelve and a half buttloads.

yeah yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah yeah, just let me see Friends once again

Wow indeed!

[TheEmptySet]

Americans alone 'waste' around 325,000 lifetimes a year watching TV. Sure some chunk of it counts as education and healthy relaxation, but I'm not prepared to believe that even makes up half of it.

I think of the projects the article mentions as more like 'SETI at home'. Getting people to use unused cycles to do something potentially productive and pretty much guaranteed to be better for them. It's a shame my computer's CPU doesn't benefit from the experience of running some 'SETI at home' calculations.

Wasn't this the plot of Batman Forever?

[Anonymous Coward]

The one with Jim Carrey as the Riddler? He was trying harness everyone's brainwaves that were being wasted by watching TV.

Good News?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you say this bodes well for OSS, Creative Commons, charity work and polictical action? Personal interests, the drummers and the pipers are major players into the allocation of cognitive suplus. Its the drummers and the pipers that can lead us to greatness or destruction. It is better not to be a lemming nor trampled under their feet. Mining the surplus can be very beneficial to the world, with meditation in various forms it becomes a renewable resource as well.

Bullshit

[Neon Aardvark]

A. Wikipedia has no original information (in theory), it is a repository of cites, so it's a poor choice for what could be accomplished by people using their leisure time to work and actually create something new.

B. What could have been done by all the people reading about this study? And these are intelligent, slashdot-people. Well, some of them.

C. How much productivity, measured in Swimming-Pool-Empire-State-Building-Einstein-Years, is lost by not embracing genetic manipulation to improve average intelligence and produce a master race?

D. Yawn.

Bogus.

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading this wasted 0.00000006 of a wikipedia of my life... look TV or otherwise no person is 100% productive 100% of the time and frankly there's alot of "thought" hours out there I'd rather not be exposed to. How many wiki's did this man waste rewording the argument everyone's parents used of "TV will rot your brain!"

Post Inducer

[Al Mutasim]

Doesn't that essay make you want to post comments to Slashdot, rather than just read? It does me.

Re:Post Inducer

[LaskoVortex]

I was thinking of posting anonymously because everyone agreeing with TFA is getting systematically modded down. But I'm going to stick my neck out on this one.

I think many people on this forum hope that they are the only ones who know how to type or make any sort of meaningful contribution on line. This is painful arrogance. I see a lot of: (1) "the statistics are meaningless" and (2) "most people are stupid and can contribute nothing" comments here. It gets redundant watching people who measure their IQ as a function inverse of their slashdot id.

The thing that escape those with this arrogance, though, is that everyone is able to contribute online. Every thought that comes out of people is a contribution to the collective consciousness, even if you make redundant groupthink posts on slashdot. Although a handful of websites (e.g. slashdot) pioneered online collaborative thought, they will not forever remain the only legitimate sources of such. For example, how many people have solved a programming or computer administration problem from a poorly written post by someone who "knew less" than themselves? I suspect many, although it may be tough for these individuals to admit.

Re:Post Inducer

[my $anity 0]

Not really.

Re:Post Inducer

[Anonymous Coward]

I concur.

Re:Post Inducer

[BigJClark]

This above post-inducer comment has induced me to post a reply to said post. Induce Induce, post post.

good missed points

[opencity]

Jerry Mander's book from the 70s made a crucial distinction between active and passive media. The above slashdot comments seem limited to wikipedia bashing or a splitting of web 2.0 hairs re:2008. That is, the percentage that are coherent, which is low by the usually high standards of non technical commentary on this site ... cough ...

This reminded me of seeing Esther Dyson and some pundits on Charley Rose a couple of years ago. They all laughed when Dyson said: "I can't tell you what web 2.0 means". Web 2.04 (or wherever we're at) means everyone can be Esther Dyson, everyone can be Charley Rose. Not everyone can be Tom Friedman as it takes years to acquire the ego involved in that much stupidity. Now is everyone going to be Charley Rose? No. Will there still be old school one way media? Yes, at least for a long time.

Mander's point is that TV is passive and active participation works the brain muscles more than then passive staring at the screen. The brain is a muscle, use it or lose it. As someone who quit TV, not unlike drugs, in my teen years I've long argued that TV was the reason for the collapse of literacy in the US. Will the wide open web cure that? Probably not, we shall see, but any change is good. American pop culture, mainstream corporate entertainment, now resembles a piece of chewing gum so worked over there is no flavor left (see: pop music). Are endless sectarian/technical blog exchanges entertaining? YMMV, but compared to what's on TV and the radio they at least measure up.

Re:good missed points

[maxume]

+1 bonus point for ripping on Friedman.

Re:good missed points

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Jerry Mander engage in redrawing boundaries of congressional districts?

Re:good missed points

[Anonymous Coward]

No but should be modded funny. And it's his real name.

Especially since

[Sycraft-fu]

Sometimes you need mental downtime, just like physical downtime. If you've just finished running a marathon, you aren't really going to want to go shovel your driveway right afterwards, nor are you likely to be effective if you do. Your body is worn out and needs to relax. Well, the same is true of the mind after hard work. Sometimes you just need to relax. There is nothing wrong with this, and in fact can make you more effective when you do go back to work.

Then, of course, there's the problem of assuming there's something wrong with goofing off. I don't know why some people seem to think life should be nothing but work. On the grand scale, what is the point of living if all you do is have no fun? There is nothing at all wrong with goofing off, and if people want to goof off by watching TV, that's fine.

There is no reason why people should have to be (or even could be) productive every waking hour of the day. It's ok if you just want to kick back and goof off. After all, I'd say that's what the work is for in the first place.

Re:Especially since

[Azghoul]

The point is that there are _constructive_ ways to goof off. RTFA, really.

I am not a resource

[BorgCopyeditor]

Mining? Surplus? Resources? To hell with that.

My mind is not for rent / to any god or government.

I am not a number. I am a free man.

Re:I am not a resource

[Anonymous Coward]

I am Billgatus of Borg

Resistance is futile

You will be assimilated

Re:I am not a resource

[Siridar]

by BorgCopyeditor (590345)
I am not a number. I am a free man. Be quiet, 590345!

Re:I am not a resource

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

I knew I knew that from somewhere...

I actually had to google it (shame on me, A Rush fan too!)

If music like the old political rock* made a comeback at the right time, it may just re-influence society to vote, join a club, fight for a cause, or worse, understand, realize, live up to their potential.

Of course I would be quite scary if I lived up to my potential. I am a great shot w/ a sniper rifle in CS/ UT3, and a 40/40 in RL!

*That also sounds good, sorry but I have to exclude System of a Down. While personally I like there stuff, and feel that their music sounds good, sometimes I hate listening to someone scream into a mike and know few people who do.

Tried it already

[77Punker]

I'm about to graduate from college and at the end of this semester, I realized I had a ton of math homework that I needed to do in order to pass. Why was this the case? I'm a smart guy so it's really not very difficult for me, and it's not just busywork.

I had been wasting time playing video games. I decided about 3 weeks ago that I wasn't going to spend my time doing things that have no outcome and only serve as time sinks: no video games, no pot smoking, no TV watching(unless it's informative). Exceptions (like social events) do exist, but I've stuck to it.

Since then, I put time into my senior seminar and it ended up kicking ass, done a whole semester's worth of math in about 4 straight days, greatly increased my guitar playing ability, learned to meditate, and learned a new programming language. I've also taken care of loads of smaller things I may have just ignored and come closer to some friends and family. Most of this great success is due to the fact that I've eliminated my biggest time sink (video games). I imagine I'll also have more money, since video games are expensive and I'm selling my X360.

These changes have allowed me to come closer to my full potential, and I don't regret it one bit. For me, video games took hours (years?) of time that I'll never get back, but at least I'm young enough that it's not too late. I feel like I just woke up from a coma.

I strongly encourage everyone to examine his time-sinking habits and eliminate them; it may change your life!

Re:Tried it already

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeh, just imagine all the gold-collecting and powerlevelling you could do in WoW if those pesky consoles weren't around.

Re:Tried it already

[Anonymous Coward]

#1 Time sink: Slashdot.

Re:Tried it already

[Anonymous Coward]

I strongly encourage everyone to examine his time-sinking habits and eliminate them; it may change your life! Are you saying that I have to give up slashdot? 'Cause that's not going to happen.

Re:Tried it already

[antifoidulus]

The key isn't to get rid of it entirely, that is just going from one extreme to another. If you have to worry about being productive all the time you are just going to fizzle out more often then not. The key of course is moderation. Sometimes I find slacking off helps when I am at a standstill on a difficult problem. Just getting my mind off of it seems to allow it to wander and usually I will wind up figuring out the critical step while my nose isn't buried in a book.

You can also find more productive ways of slacking off, if that makes any sense. For instance, my guilty vice is South Park, so I loaded up the latest episode today and watched it while I was on an elliptical machine in the gym(with a set of wireless headphones). I was able to watch the episode and workout at the same time.

Re:Tried it already

[thygrrr]

I had exactly this thought today, and thanks for your post - I'll try it.

I desperately tried to kill a lot of time today, and now I regret having killed most of it surfing the web, playing games, etc. The only productive parts of the day were some laundry I got done, and the 2 hours of excercise on my bike in the sun, which was great.

The whole time, I kept wondering: What do I do now? What do I do now? I dabbled with a lot of small things, and got a lot done, but hardly enough to be truly satisfied. Instead, I feel like I murdered at least 8 hours of daylight.

Re:Tried it already

[77Punker]

My standard for productive things here is pretty liberal; smoking a joint and playing guitar for three hours can count as productive because I'm getting better at something that exists in real life. Also, maybe I could play with my dog or ride my bike. I guess the point of my original post was that playing video games by myself usually doesn't do anything to make me a better person or improve my life or the world around me. All that happens is that I lose valuable time inside a world that doesn't exist. I'm pretty much always a nice person, so anything I do to interact with the world around me is probably going to improve it somehow, so I should do pretty much anything besides playing video games.

Re:Tried it already

[moosesocks]

As another university student I do have to add a small caveat:

Burnout sucks.... and if you're "working" for 12+ Hours a day, it can very easily happen.

If I get back from work at 9PM, it's fairly therapeutic to relax and unwind by sitting down and watching an hour or so of TV. Similarly, gathering a few friends every week to watch Lost (or whatever other serial happens to be fashionable at the moment) is a great excuse to socialize.

Interestingly, I lived above the arctic circle last summer, and found that thanks to the 24-hour sunlight, I was going outdoors after work, and finding "better" things to do with my nightly downtime.

Re:Tried it already

[bendodge]

I strongly encourage everyone to examine his time-sinking habits and eliminate them; it may change your life! What? Y-you mean, no more Slashdot??

Re:Tried it already

[Eil]

I was in the exact same place as you and came to the same exact conclusions. Throughout my teen years I was a video game fiend. Not just casual gaming mind you, but the long RPGs that take 50+ hours to beat even if you're in a hurry. Video games were literally my entire life. I didn't have many friends, I didn't date, I didn't even get the chance to experiment with alcohol and drugs with my peers. I just played shitloads of games. When I wasn't playing them, I was reading about them. When I wasn't reading about them, I was thinking about them.

Fast forward to me at 20 years old. I was having some trouble getting past a difficult boss in Final Fantasy 9. It was late so I just gave it up and went to bed at some point. The next day, after I got home from work, I looked at the Playstation and somehow realized right then and there that battling imaginary monsters and exploring fictional worlds had absolutely no tangible impact on anything that really mattered in my life. So I simply went off to do something else instead.

I always had an interest in computers and open source and quitting video games let me focus on them nearly full-time. Looking back, it's almost creepy how quickly I went from around 35 hours of video games per week for over a decade to nothing literally overnight. These days I only play games casually. Once every couple months I'll pick up the GameBoy Advance and play Sonic for a half hour, or perhaps plug in the old Playstation and whiz through a few levels of Wipeout XL. I go on an emulator kick about once a year. Other than that, nada.

I'm not saying that quitting games turned me into a genius or a high-roller. In fact, my job bores me and the married life means that I have less time to myself than ever. But retiring the D-pad was possibly one of the best moves I have ever made and the timing couldn't have been better. Some people are in their 30's and don't realize how much of their lives they willingly forfeited to video games.

Re:Tried it already

[Anonymous Coward]

Moderation is overrated, but so are negative goals. It may be acceptable at a particular point in time to burn a little time watching tv, but I believe that goals and self-improvement most important. A good way to attack this is with concrete achievements that are meaningful to you ("learn Spanish" or "write a ray tracer") as well as metrics to evaluate your performance ("rate of progress through the book", "features implemented today"). The hours in the day, week and year are fixed, so after some period of day over day improvement things that are less important to you (say watching CSI) will get squeezed out.

Re:Tried it already

[onion_joe]

Tool. :-)

Re:Tried it already

[gatzke]

If I could just get rid of slashdot...

Too bad there is no option in my preferences page to block myself from logging in? I have tried putting 127.0.0.1 in my etc/hosts but I eventually realized slashdot will resolve anything, asdf.slashdot.org still works!

Re:Tried it already

[just fiddling around]

The problem is, you won't be able to be "online" all the time, perpetually. Everybody needs downtime to freshen up and lower the stress level. You may keep this up for a few months, a few years even; the need won't go away.

I don't say you HAVE to watch TV or pass time on video games. It is good that you realized that you have a finite amount of time to *invest* on anything. All you have to do is choose *where* to invest.

The places you invest in do not have to pay dividends; I for one use 8 hours or more of my week to dance (Balboa swing-dancing). Won't make me the next Frankie Manning, and I don't care as long as I have fun. That is downtime. Guitar playing can be downtime if done for fun. Taking 2 weeks off to laze on the beach is intensive downtime. Doing repair work on your car or contributing to an OSS project can be downtime IF it is done on a "time-permitting" basis.

All told the message is: do stuff, but don't push yourself in a burnout. Welcome the the world of people who do stuff!

Re:Tried it already

[Dripdry]

I feel there may be more fallout from a media culture than simply lost cognition. I hypothesize that it also lowers our standards for expertise and nuanced professional knowledge as well.

Many actions have a steep acceleration in one's ability to perform/learn them at the beginning, or after an extended period of time away from them. I posit that saying we've "learned" something after only a tiny amount of time with it is a by-product of the same Videogame/TV/instant gratification culture we've grown accustomed to.
On the other hand, have we come to expect more from ourselves in a shorter amount of time? Have we taught ourselves to master complex systems in short order? Or are we just lying to ourselves and others in a world where we could constantly be compared to others, and have unrealistic expectations?

In three weeks, you've learned to do something that takes devoted followers a lifetime to master? (meditation)
You've learned an entire programming language too?
My own experience with instruments has been that time off tends to be a huge benefit. Congratulations, though.

I understand you may mean that you have simply BEGUN to explore these avenues, so forgive me if I have misrepresented your words.

I didn't want to come in here and bash someone's accomplishments, just point out that the key to newfound productivity may lie more in consistency over time, typically learned with maturity. How long does this "reawakening" go for, truly? That's only something each of us can answer for ourselves.

Just some thoughts, I hope none are taken too personally but as helpful criticism instead.

P.S. I was without a TV for 6 months in 2003, and it is the best thing that ever happened to me.

Re:Tried it already

[77Punker]

Well, I don't claim to be an expert at Perl, but I can trace a program and determine its output, and implement any algorithm I could do in Java and C while making use of some Perl-specific syntax. I am not an expert at meditating, either, but I do meditate now and it leaves me feeling good. The point is that I get nothing out of video games and there's other fun things to do that actually have an impact on myself or the world around me without necessarily tiring me out.

I vote Mary Ann...

[RJFerret]

Wait, what was the question again?

Re:I vote Mary Ann...

[Anonymous Coward]

oooh, sorry, the answer we were looking for is Ginger:)

Silly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Extremely silly. For one thing, we already measure how much work people do, at least in theory: the GDP. Granted, there are problems with the GDP, most notably the fact that it isn't capable of measuring the value of Wikipedia.

But whether you slice it as attention (one Wikipiedia), information quantity (one Library of Congress), or labor and services (GDP), you're in essence measuring the amount of effort people put forth.

Let's say half the US population is employed at 15$ an hour and works a 40 hour week. This comes out to 4 or 5 trillion, maybe a third or so of the GDP (13 trillion). Note how retardedly conservative this is: a third of the GDP and half the population using half of its time working at an hourly wage. But this estimate also comes out to 3120 Wikipedias (40 * 150 million people * 52 weeks / 100,000,000 man-hours/wikipedia).

In other words, every year, in GDP alone, the US puts out MUCH MUCH more than 3000 Wikipedias.

Free time is what people do when they AREN'T BUSY doing things like raising the GDP or producing art or what have you. Yes, there are a freaking lot of people in America, and yes, a lot of them relax by watching TV.

It's just magic with numbers.

What he's trying to say is that maybe people will spend their free time doing something useful instead of watching TV, but he doesn't really have any argument or statistic to support this. Waving your hands around and saying "HOLY CRAP THERE'S SO MUCH TV WATCHING" does not fly.

In the end I suspect the Internet Revolution, mass collaboration, artistic utopia of connection, etc. will largely be brought about with the emerging tech-savvy generation and the very best and brightest thereof, not with any sizable percentage of TV-obsessed "drones." Remember, the original "Internet for the masses" was AOL.

More of this nonsense?

[Jane Q. Public]

It's a stupid idea and an even stupider name.

When he shows a cause-effect relationship between pretty much ANYTHING and his new "unit", or anything useful that is in reality easily calculable using this unit, I might start listening.

Video games? Pets?

[mi]

Depends on your definition of "waste" though, are sitcoms a waste if you enjoy them?

I say, they are — along with watching (rather than participating in) sports, etc.

Unless the stuff is educational or otherwise improving (if it helps you rest or improves your relationship with the other parent of your children, for example, then it is fine), engaging in it is a waste. I'm surprised, computer-games have not been listed yet...

When Julius Caesar observed foreigners in Rome cooing with their pets, he famously asked: "Aren't their women bearing children?"

The waste of time on entertainment — along with the waste of emotions/nurturing on anything but your own kind is hardly new to our times... Religions and totalitarian governments have been trying to limit it in people for millennia.

This is not to say, I have not indulged in this waste — or that anyone should be begrudged for doing so. Just not excessively...

Once again, it should be viewed broadly — witness, for example, the realization by various religions, that "sex must be for procreation only" is too strict, and replacing it with "sex must be with your spouse only" (healthy relationships mean happier people and better brought up kids). Back to sitcoms, if you enjoy a particular one with your wife and/or friends, it is Ok. Otherwise — stop doing it and take the garbage out instead.

Definitely Mary Ann

[admiralfurburger]

Although, Ginger in elf costume might sway me...

Shirky also over on blogging heads

[dsanford]

There is an April 19 dialogue between Will Wilkinson and Clay Shirky on: http://bloggingheads.tv/ specifically http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/10353 that turned me on to Clay Shirky, I haven't ordered his book yet, but it is on my Amazon wish list ;->

TFA is *observation* that passiveness is changing

[AySz88]

The reason is obvious to me - after 40+ hours of working in a week, most people I know want to relax and not think much; passively watching TV is the perfect outlet. Your 'obvious' point is precisely the assumption which is countered (I think, quite successfully) in TFA. The observation of the article is that this "relax = not think much" way of life is now evidently being replaced with a desire for thoughtful participation. And even a 1% shift creates a gigantic amount of 'surplus' desire to create. And so, this 'cognitive surplus' is becoming available to be 'mined'.

So, something that responds to the article, please...?

Not arguing, but observing

[AySz88]

TFA is not hypothetically arguing that passive consumption (i.e. watching sitcoms) should become useful effort. TFA is observing that the shift from passive to participatory is already taking place, and is extrapolating that this shift will continue.

Don't miss the new standard unit!

[Katatsumuri]

So, Wikipedia is the new Library of Congress!

Re: Books vs TV

[TaoPhoenix]

I will gladly put support behind this trade. "Productive" doesn't need to be creating a second job for yourself ... only that some kind of value is forming.

I think the trick is that TV is guaged at a level of "Here I am with the remote... is there *something* worth staying here for, or is *all* of it so bad I have to shut it off?"

I am a very enthusiastic reader, and 95% of my books are better chosen with a theme than TV's forced selection.

Also, I find that books create their own fatigue indicator. If I'm tired and have wound down after 45 minutes of reading, time for a nap. TV constantly pushes you awake on a low grade idle, clicking the raw hours by.

Re: If we must watch TV...

[TaoPhoenix]

Nope.

No more waiting (wasting!) an entire week for an episode, then as it plays sitting through 22 minutes of commercials.

If you can't stand to be serious and must relax, then burn one day, watch 9 episodes in 7 hours, and put the next 8 weeks to your previously scheduled productive activity.

We should spend all our collective mental energy

[presidenteloco]

Seeking out the half dozen or so people whose views are well thought out enough to be worth listening to. In my humble and profoundly uninformed opinion, that is.

Three words

[Evil_Ether]

Quality over quantity 

in defense of poetry

[SaberTaylor]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Apology_for_Poetry (1595)

Let's stop reading fiction! It's a waste of cpu cycles^W^Whuman cognition. Form supreme Voltron englightenment now... I liked the comments on BoingBoing better.

That analysis addresses a different question

[Geof]

You can't jump from "most visitors don't contribute to Wikipedia" to "most people don't contribute online". That's like arguing that most people don't have jobs because most of them don't work for Microsoft. It's absurd. Analysis of contribution rates at any given site tell us nothing at all about whether most people participate somewhere online or whether they are passive consumers. Nothing.

To make the claims you're making, you need to look at the overall behavior of individual people across all the sites they visit. The Pew study in the linked article did that, and found nearly half of Internet users contribute to something.

Participation is valuable regardless of content

[Geof]

Postman has a tendency towards technological determinism. It is not necessarily fruitful to treat the Internet as a single medium, and it's certainly not a medium whose social significance has stabilized yet. At this point, the convergence with TV that you talk about is only one possible outcome - one that must be vigorously resisted.

That said, you are right to focus on the effects online activity have on people, rather than the relative value of the content they produce. Participation online can help people think and develop their capacities (e.g. writing skills), it can form communities, and it can result in action in the offline world (e.g. political organization). These effects can be beneficial even if nothing is produced, or if what is produced is not of high quality.

Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone also takes aim at television. Putnam attributes 25% of the decline in social capital (community involvement etc.) in America since the mid 1960s to television. I find his evidence compelling. See also William Gibson talking about when TV was switched on in New York. A feature on the DVD for The Naked City goes into some detail about this (I can have the text of the quote if you're interested).

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

[Anonymous Coward]

- Bertrand Russell

Dodgy history

[nlper]

Others have remarked on the dubious idea of equating a decline in watching television with a "cognitive surplus" that will transform society.

My pet peeve lies with Shirky's Web 2.0 presentation and his taking huge licenses with history. He starts off a claim about the importance of gin in helping Brits get over their future shock at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and links it to his point thusly:

"And it wasn't until society woke up from that collective bender that we actually started to get the institutional structures that we associate with the industrial revolution today. Things like public libraries and museums, increasingly broad education for children, elected leaders -- a lot of things we like -- didn't happen until having all of those people together stopped seeming like a crisis and started seeming like an asset."

One big problem with that assessment is that the chronology doesn't fit his thesis. Municipal public libraries, for example, started appearing in the US and UK in the early 1600s -- a century and a half before the Industrial Revolution. The British gin boom had a lot to do with tax policies and occurred at least a generation before the IR. And if by elected leaders he means an elected head of state (the House of Commons idea had been around long before the IR), it seems a tenuous link at best. The US Constitution is in roughly the same time frame as the start of the IR, but the new country was hardly overwhelmed with and reacting to issues of industrialization.

My conclusion: if he has such a loose grasp of history, why should I give any credence to his take on the future?

Tyler

Re:Dodgy history

[myowntrueself]

isn't there some line of reasoning here going from use of gin as a way to make water potable (ie not going to make you sick) to the tea-drinking culture where people boiled water and, incidentally, made water potable and having the side effect that most of the population isn't slightly tipsy all the time to society kind of improving due to most people not being, in effect, constantly on the piss?

This did occur before the industrial revolution... perhaps theres a connection here?

Get your cognitive surplus here!

[cmacb]

I'm not sure what the term means, but I'm fairly sure I have a lot of it.

To the meta moderators

[Anonymous Coward]

Please note how poorly this discussion was moderated. Take the parent post for example. The responses rebutting the parent post, while generally insightful, accurate, and on topic received fewer mod points than the somewhat offtopic parent.

--
wanna be anonymous? don't post

a lot of web 2.0 is passive media, though

[Trepidity]

Watching YouTube videos is not substantially different. In many cases it's worse for intellect than watching television.

Re:a lot of web 2.0 is passive media, though

[Anonymous Coward]

> In many cases it's worse for intellect than watching television.

Care to elaborate? I don't see that.

yeah the web has totally changed this

[Trepidity]

Unlike that shitty stuff on television, we produce only the finest art on youtube.com.

Re:yeah the web has totally changed this

[WaltBusterkeys]

we produce only the finest art on youtube.com.

I was totally moved by that video of that guy getting hit in the junk with a baseball. THAT is high comedy.

Re: Books vs TV

[_Hellfire_]

I think the trick is that TV is guaged at a level of "Here I am with the remote... is there *something* worth staying here for, or is *all* of it so bad I have to shut it off?"

I have to agree. To me, sitting in front of the TV for hours on end is exactly the same as throwing some random TV-programmer schmuck the keys to my brain and saying "Here, you drive for a while". No thanks.

A couple of years ago I decided to selectively watch only the TV programs that *really* engage my attention. Shows that I feel like I've had an experience after watching them. If a show doesn't give me that feeling I don't watch it again. Period. So now I have a few favourites (House and Lost to specify the entire list); but on the other hand, if I don't catch them for a few weeks because I'm busy with something else, no biggy. There are much better things to occupy my time with.

Yawn

[Phaid]

I can sum up both my own reaction, and why the article is fatuous pie in the sky nonsense in four simple letters TLDR

One Ounce Per Ton,

[Anonymous Coward]

What a Fantastic Mine

Cory Doctorpw

[orthogonal]

If Cory Doctorow thinks it's great, I can safely ignore it, right?

There is no cognitive surplus

[Animats]

Go spend a few hours doing recent changes patrol on Wikipedia. Then come back and talk about a "cognitive surplus".

It's more like the Descent of Man - from The Well to Wordpress to Myspace to Twitter.

"People spend hours bemoaning the fact that they cannot communicate. I feel that if a person cannot communicate, the least they can do is to shut up!" - Tom Lehrer

TFA's still full of it

[Moraelin]

TFA is still full of it, IMHO.

1. As others already pointed out, you _can't_ do mental work for 16 hours a day and still be top-productivity. And the GP's post isn't just "possible", it's actually proven.

I remember at least one study where some students were asked to solve some complicated maths problems. Some were told to take a break, get a good night's sleep, etc. Some were told to forge ahead, keep at it all day, and generally do the kind of 16 hours a day mental work that TFA implicitly assumes possible. (You know, the whole assumption being that you could work on Wikipedia if you weren't watching TV.) The guys who had a more humane schedule actually finished faster.

You can see this in places where massive overtime is constantly demanded too. (E.g., most of the computer games industry.) In the long term people just get tired, make more mistakes, and eventually burn out.

The brain does tire, same as everything else. You can cheat a bit by using different parts of it. E.g., if you write programs at work, you write about physics on Wikipedia or do some creative stuff at home. But even that only goes so far.

We also know by now, that the brain has finite buffers. And overflow just causes E.g., the first (short-term) buffer is only 8 seconds. If you don't take a short break (just watch the ceiling for 10 seconds, or do 10 steps around the room) to let it flush when you overload it, data starts being discarded. The next one we know about is about 3 days worth, and apparently data from it is only "persisted" to permanent memory during REM sleep. Again, ploughing through a lot of information too fast, and/or skipping enough sleep, can cause data to be lost. (Essentially doing 2 all-nighters before an exam in college guarantees that you'll know that stuff for the exam, but forget it immediately afterwards.)

So, yes, it is not only possible, but known and proved that people can only do so much mental work per day and still be productive.

2. It's also a matter of interests. You're the most productive for the things that keep you at least a bit interested and maybe even entertained. E.g., if you're fascinated by, say, history but hate geography, you could maintain some history pages on Wikipedia, but basically trying to maintain geography pages would be a chore.

What I'm getting at here, though, is that only a narrow minority of the population, the "nerds", develop some sort of obsession with a narrow domain. (It's one of the invariant symptoms in Asperger's, for example.) Or enough of it to do it in their free time.

Most of the people just don't develop enough of an interest in anything to really further human knowledge. Even if you could un-invent TV overnight, they'd go to the pub instead, not start studying some science. And if you forced them at gun-point to do science in their free time, they'd take it as a chore and do a half-arsed job that doesn't really benefit anyone.

3. Singling out TV is freaking stupid. For as long as we have a recorded history, and even from the primitive tribes we found, people have _some_ time where they just relax and/or are entertained.

They go to the pub, or sit around the fire and gossip, or have a tribal dance in the village centre, or whatever appropriate for the time and place. Long before TV and computer games, people played cards, dice, or whatever other unproductive passtime. Chess was invented as a 4 player wargame, actually modeling the units used at the time. It was the primitive version of Command And Conquer, not t3h uber-intellectual challenge for nerds. (Then they figured out that, many centuries before the Internet, it's a pain to find 4 players at the same time. So they made it for 2 players, each taking command of 2 armies. That's why you have 2 of each piece. And one King became Grand Vizier, and the most powerful piece in the game. It's what now we call a Queen.) Etc.

Or if we're at "TV", people used to go to a theatre for exactly the same purpose as watching a movie on TV. Pretty much any

Re:TFA's still full of it

[mrogers]

Wow, a comment that long must have burned at least one millipedia (or 0.14 kilogilligans, if you prefer the old units). ;-)

1. As others already pointed out, you _can't_ do mental work for 16 hours a day and still be top-productivity.

I don't think anyone's suggesting that everyone will, or should, spend 40 hours a week editing Wikipedia - but if one person in ten spends half an hour a week on some collaborative project, that adds up to enough time for some truly massive projects.

2. It's also a matter of interests. You're the most productive for the things that keep you at least a bit interested and maybe even entertained.

Right, that's exactly why amateur collaborative projects work so well - by choosing the projects that interest them and ignoring the projects that don't, contributors maximise their own productivity.

3. Singling out TV is freaking stupid. For as long as we have a recorded history, and even from the primitive tribes we found, people have _some_ time where they just relax and/or are entertained.

OK, this is Clay Shirky we're talking about, he didn't get famous by presenting all sides of the argument. But his side does have some merit. You're right to point out that TV isn't the first non-participatory medium, but I'd argue that in the last 50 years people have spent more of their time enjoying non-participatory media than ever before. Most people don't get together to play instruments and sing - they listen to recorded music. Most people don't sit round the fire telling stories - they watch TV. Now I'm not claiming that the internet will cause a renaissance of folk culture and transform every couch potato into a bard, but I think there's a lot of latent creativity out there, and if you offer people a way to express it - at a time and in a manner of their choosing - a few of them will have something valuable to contribute.

Re:TFA's still full of it

[node 3]

So, yes, it is not only possible, but known and proved that people can only do so much mental work per day and still be productive. You can write a lot, your reading needs some work, though. I didn't say people didn't have a mental work capacity/limit. I said that it's impossible *that we are at that limit right now*.

By analogy, our cars have a maximum distance they can travel per day (under their own power), but it's impossible that we are at that maximum. Cars just sitting in a parking space is like people sitting in front of the TV.

It's absolutely *absurd* to claim that we are at maximum mental utilization. It's also absolutely *absurd* to pretend that TV isn't a major contributor to our mental utilization deficit.

2. It's also a matter of interests. You're the most productive for the things that keep you at least a bit interested and maybe even entertained. ...

Most of the people just don't develop enough of an interest in anything to really further human knowledge. Even if you could un-invent TV overnight, they'd go to the pub instead, not start studying some science. And if you forced them at gun-point to do science in their free time, they'd take it as a chore and do a half-arsed job that doesn't really benefit anyone. So there are social "write-offs" in the population. That doesn't change the fact that there are many people who are *not* write-offs, who *would* be engaging in more productive activities if they weren't watching TV. Who cares if that activity is scientifically-oriented or not? They might put their free time into artistic or creative endeavors, or they might put them into the social welfare of their families, neighborhoods, etc.

Hell, even if all they did was go to the pub, or join a softball league, they'd be doing something more useful to those around them than they are when watching TV.

Take this lame-ass discussion we're having. It's not going to change the world. At best, it might give a handful of people a different perspective on something, or maybe encourage them to do some small thing they wouldn't have otherwise done.

But even that little bit is better than what would have happened had we both just spend this time in front of the television.

Singling out TV is freaking stupid. Why? TV is the opiate de jour. Should he have picked on the gladiator games at the colosseum? That wouldn't make any sense. TV is a target that is actually *currently* addressable.

Second, TV is unique in that, unlike previous pastimes, it's overwhelmingly a waste of time, it's completely passive, and once you have a TV and cable service, there's no barrier to participation. No other pastime is available 24/7 and requiring no preparation or skill.

A Modern Problem

[Aceticon]

There seems to be a widespread assumption in modern western societies that free time = wasted time.

Somehow there's an expectation that people should use every waking moment to do something "productive". The best example of this trend are Blackberries and how they so often are used to extend one's working hours to to every single free moment we had left.

Especially in Anglo-Saxon societies, people are expected to work continuously, eat at their desks,have no breaks and take work home with them - it's nuts: half the mid-level decision makers seem to be in a constant state of overstressed exhaustion, so no wonder overall corporate productivity is low, wrong decisions are common and a state of barely contained chaos is the rule. Nobody is thinking of the big picture - they're all keeping up with the flow of data (95% worthless chaff) and running around putting out fires.

And now this article ...

This is totally against the way the brain works - people absolutely need some sort of mental "decompression" time. Passive consumption of intellectually-undemanding TV entertainment is a form of relaxation and release from everyday stress.

Television might be crap, but it serves a purpose - entertainment without requiring any effort: call it chewing-gum for the brain.

Re:Fascinating? Nope!

[aurispector]

I think you get the essence here. This dude pulls quantification out of his ass. The hours I spend watching tv are essentially different than those spent working. Who wants to work all the time? A lot of folks used to watch more tv because that was the only way to see video. New tech is changing that, with more convenient ways to get information and entertainment. Even tv itself is different with on demand services.

Tech enables mass collaboration in a way never before possible and this is the basic difference. Instead of reading or tinkering in garages or sitting on the porch knitting or whatever, we can now go online and collaborate in our off hours. Besides, what's teh internets about but information? It's not possible to knit online, but you can trade information about knitting. Once you post a knitting pattern, it's there forever. If every knitter spends 30 seconds posting a knitting pattern that's archived permanently, the archive will eventually get pretty big but the archive itself only represents a small fraction of knitters collective free time.

Bottom line: this dude wants to sell a book, so he sensationalizes the fact that people share and store information online. My local church has a file cabinet full of knitting patterns shared by a group of knitters that use space at the church. No difference except the knitting group and file cabinet's bigger.

MindBOINC

[invisiblerhino]

I had the idea, after using SETI@Home and similar, that maybe in the distant future, you could sign up to a system of contributing to scientific projects via telepathic link. You would be sitting around watching TV, and suddenly a request would pop into your head for a little bit of equation rearrangement or geometric manipulation. I often half-watch TV while trying to do a Sudoku or something, this is just the logical next step. Admittedly, telepathic link is slightly beyond our current capabilities, but I'm confident it will appear in time for the Year of Linux on the Desktop.

TV Party tonight!

[Freeside1]

We've got nothing better to do, than watch tv and have a couple of brews...
/black flag

It's Called a Signal-to-Noise Ratio

[amplt1337]

There are two axes to this change. On the one hand there's the active-vs-passive (or interactive-vs-passive), and on the other there's the trivial-vs-deep. A change from passive-trivial to active-trivial doesn't make much difference to society. What would, would be people shifting from passive-trivial activities to passive-deep activities (don't watch Survivor, read a physics textbook); after that's done, then the passive-to-active shift will mean something good for society.

Failing that change, we have the present: people yammering on without a point. It's great for a lot of people-hours to be spent interactively instead of watching TV; and for this to produce permanent content. But (as the Wikipedia example so elegantly demonstrates) all that junk from the enthusiastic amateurs easily tends to drown out the truly good contributions.

I'm all for people not watching TV and instead learning something and applying it. But what if instead we all just decided to give each other IANAL legal advice on Slashdot? Suddenly it's impossible to find the really good content, and the reader doesn't know who or what to trust (ProTip: Probably not legal advice on slashdot). I think this is exactly what's happening in the spheres of production outlined by the Internet; people are contributing but aren't yet in a position to do so effectively. Hopefully that will change as time goes on, but the real paradigm change is yet to come.

Although I am given to understand it's revolutionized the way we find people to sleep with.

Turn off the TV set.

[crovira]

"Plus I don't know anyone who actually sits in front of the TV drooling. My TV is on, but I'm reading Slashdot and about to go do the dishes. My father was a teacher and used to mark in front of the TV. I know lots of people who turn the TV on and then have a nap."

You're the kind of person who unconsciously wastes resources.

Turn off the damn TV set and stop wasting electricity.

Re:Turn off the TV set.

[ceoyoyo]

Well I hope you only turn your computer on for an hour a day and do everything as quickly as possible, then shut it off again. Kind of like opening the fridge.

Of course, with that high a concentration of pomposity there really must be a way of harnessing it to do useful work.

He's at least partially right

[wcrowe]

I don't know if everything he says is correct, but I think many of his observations are right on the money.

Personally, I find television impossible to watch these days. Not only are there too many ads, but there is too much "chatter" -- spots the networks put in to hype up their own shows. At every break one is treated to the same 30 second spot promoting "shark week", or something. All of the repetition becomes too irritating.

For a couple of years, I watched almost no TV at all. Then I got a Tivo, and that helped. But since the writer's strike, I have found that even with the Tivo, I'm deleting about as many shows as I watch. During the strike, I didn't watch reruns, so I found other things to do. It would appear that there are better things to do with my time, and not all of them involve the internet.

I'm 45, and even I am looking for the mouse behind the screen.

We post medical education videos on YouTube

[KWTm]

Our medical group has created a number of short video clips for educating our patients on various relevant health and health care topics, and is posting them on YouTube. We figure it's an easy way to disseminate knowledge to the general population.

So, yes, I agree with you that you can't label all of YouTube as bad.

Re: If we must watch TV...

[clint999]

Nope. No more waiting (wasting!) an entire week for an episode, then as it plays sitting through 22 minutes of commercials. If you can't stand to be serious and must relax, then burn one day, watch 9 episodes in 7 hours, and put the next 8 weeks to your prev

oh, and allways remember...

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

I tell this to my wife all the time because we tend to overbook ourselves. It's funny to me that people forget this.
If we chose not to decide, we still have made a choice!

If you don't decide, you chose the course of action of not making said decision. For instance, deciding to buy a bigger house. We can either buy the house, or not buy the house, but if we don't decide, someone else buys the house, and we have effectively made the decision to not buy.

Dude, my computers are usually on,

[crovira]

but I'm not ignoring the TV (which would be on for nothing) while I'm sitting here workin' away.

I don't suck on the glass teat. I've got other things to do, like produce podcasts, write articles and live.

You got a problem with that?

Take it up with the management.

Dear Fucking Idiot:

[Anonymous Coward]

Please use the fucking "Preview" button.

Hint: To fucking insert fucking "<", use fucking "&lt;".

Doing this, fucking "IQ 100" fucking becomes fucking "IQ < 100". Now isn't that fucking better?

Note: To fucking produce a slightly more polite fucking version of this fucking post, please fucking remove the fucking word "fucking" wherever it fucking appears, and fucking replace the fucking phrase "Idiot" in the fucking title with "Clueless HTML-Challenged Imbecile". HTH

grahamsw

[grahamsw]

Wait, is he saying that everyone else stopped drinking gin?