TV vs. LOLcats

Clay Shirky gave a talk entitled ‘Gin, Television, and Social Surplus‘ at the Web 2.0 conference, April 23, 2008. He makes some interesting points about the cognitive surplus that has been soaked up by TV for the last 50 years and is now, ostensibly, being put to better use on the internet. His talk also feeds into one of the hot topics of the moment, user-generated content. Rather than ‘waste’ time watching TV; to use TV to soak up their free time and avoid cognitive thought, people are posting articles to their blogs, editing wikipedia, making lolcats. Is this kind of participatory media more ‘worthwhile’ and valuable than catching up on the latest episodes of skins and lost? I think TV can still provide the opportunity for people to get together and discuss topics that they may not otherwise have approached. Even with ‘watercooler conversation’ disappearing due to the increasing popularity of on-demand TV services, PVRs and bit-torrent, ‘cult’ TV shows such as Lost, Family Guy, Scrubs etc. still provide that platform for hot-topic discussion.

However, is it possible that the internet provides a more productive and participatory platform on which to spend the ‘cognitive surplus’?