dirtypotato.com^2.0

"cognitive heat sink"

Clay Shirky is a guy that I used to follow going back about 6 years ago. He introduced me to the idea of the semantic web, and I loved the way he wrote. Then something happened and he seemed to stop writing on his blog or his commentary became uninteresting to me for one reason or another. I haven't heard or seen Clay speak until now. In his talk last week he mentions a few numbers that startled me. Americans spend 200 billion hours watching TV every year. We spend 100 million hours each week-end watching *just* the advertisements. Talk about lost productivity. Imagine if this time was directed at contributing to the web. As Clay puts it that would be 2000 wikipedia projects a year. I've had some free time recently, and I've spent the majority of it trying to manage the ideas that have been coming to mind. Some people say that the current web application craze is about to bust. I think it's just starting up. There is room, and there will be users for new web apps in every nook and cranny of society. I would be really interested to see what would happen if we used the 200 billion hours or "2000 wikipedia projects" of time lost a year to focus on new web app development. The results could be pretty amazing. This guy is web all the way, and I love him for it. Two of my favorite quotes from the video: "Desprate Housewives essentially functioned as a type of cognitive heat sink dissipating thinking that otherwise might have built up and caused society to overheat." "Here's what 4 year olds know: a screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Media that's targeted at you but doesn't include you may not be worth sitting still for."