Because all the cool kids are doing it

[james_davis_nicoll]

Have a transcript of Clay Shirkyon's Gin, Television, and Social Surplus

Note that linking to something is not an endorsement.

Comments

[cofax7]

There's a pretty good discussion of that essay here; I assume you've already seen the Making Light discussion.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

"To the fairest!"

Making an end-run around the obvious back and forth arguments, it strikes me that there has been very little research done on how 'free time' is actually spent. Shirky uses numbers, but it's really an appeal to anecdote, and it's an appeal that's been made before: by Serling, by Trow, by Mander, by McKibben, et cetera. Shirky is merely yoking it to his own hobbyhorse.

that's cool.

[emt-hawk.livejournal.com]

thanks.

--Hawk

[daev.livejournal.com]

Clay Shirky is a funny sort of creature. He's not really an Isaac Asimov or L. Sprague de Camp "explainer to the layman" of well-researched material, nor is he like Douglas Hofstadter, Jared Diamond, or Steven Pinker, scholars writing lively popular books which mix introductory principles with their own tentative theories. In fact, a lot of the time you aren't sure Shirky -- or Steve Yegge or Reg Braithwaite, to name a couple of similar figures -- really has the credentials or the research to support the facts he spouts. But he pulls it all together in an interesting talk that makes a memorable point. Maybe the best comparisons are people like Avram Davidson or Fred Pohl, autodidacts who could weave a fascinating little lecture-conversation on nearly any subject. Good SF convention panelists!

[lance-mcsteel.livejournal.com]

Does the writer of this magnum opus even know about YouTube? Widening the range of media choices isn't really the same as changing the mindset towards what he claims.