At least they're doing something.

Did
you ever see that episode of Gilligan's Island where they almost get
off the island and then Gilligan messes up and then they don't? I
saw that one. I saw that one a lot when I was growing up. And every
half-hour that I watched that was a half an hour I wasn't posting at
my blog or editing Wikipedia or contributing to a mailing list. Now I
had an ironclad excuse for not doing those things, which is
none of those things existed then. I was forced into the channel
of media the way it was because it was the only option. Now it's
not, and that's the big surprise. However lousy it is to sit in your
basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal
experience it's worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if
Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter.

But media is actually a triathlon, it 's three
different events. People like to consume, but they also like to
produce, and they like to share.

I think that's going to be a big deal.
Don't you?

Well,
the TV producer did not think this was going to be a big deal; she
was not digging this line of thought. And her final question to me
was essentially, "Isn't this all just a fad?" You know,
sort of the flagpole-sitting of the early early 21st century? It's fun to go out and produce and share a little bit, but
then people are going to eventually realize, "This isn't as good
as doing what I was doing before," and settle down. And
I made a spirited argument that no, this wasn't the case, that this
was in fact a big one-time shift, more analogous to the industrial
revolution than to flagpole-sitting.