Comments for songless http://www.songless.com/blog Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:37:13 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.1.3 Comment on Social Surplus by Adam http://www.songless.com/blog/2008/04/27/social-surplus/#comment-69 Adam Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:20:47 +0000 http://www.songless.com/blog/2008/04/27/social-surplus/#comment-69 Fair point, Alex. Any gross generalization about a medium is, well, gross. Also, in every established medium that I can think of, the proportion of crap to excellence is extreme - so TV is no different there. However, TV is different in the cumulative amount of time that Americans spend engaging with it. Even film doesn't approach it (and with things like HBO, that line is blurred). I don't think Shirky is arguing that TV is obsolete, so much as that it has been used to serve a particular cultural purpose (burning intellectual surplus) which may become less necessary as our society finds uses for that brainpower, and it ceases to be a surplus at all. Fair point, Alex. Any gross generalization about a medium is, well, gross. Also, in every established medium that I can think of, the proportion of crap to excellence is extreme - so TV is no different there.

However, TV is different in the cumulative amount of time that Americans spend engaging with it. Even film doesn’t approach it (and with things like HBO, that line is blurred).

I don’t think Shirky is arguing that TV is obsolete, so much as that it has been used to serve a particular cultural purpose (burning intellectual surplus) which may become less necessary as our society finds uses for that brainpower, and it ceases to be a surplus at all.

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