"The Internet-connected population watches roughly a trillion hours of TV a year. That's about five times the size of the annual U.S. consumption. One per cent of that is 10,000 Wikipedia projects per year worth of participation."

Of the Internet-connected population, how many have heard of Wikipedia? Of that number, how many edit it? Of those, how many actually add new information, rather than fixing grammar mistakes?

The vast majority of people on the Internet are consumers, not producers. Even in terms of comments, I'd wager that the comment-to-pageview ratio, even excluding rss, is far below 1%. Saying that all this cognitive surplus is going to the advancement of the Internet is nonsense. People are just finding new diversions. Instead of watching Seinfeld, they watch YouTube.

Also, as far as the principle of "It's better to do something than to do nothing," that's rarely the case. Is it truly better for people to play WoW than to watch television? How so? Within the sphere of WoW, maybe, but from an outside perspective, it's very common for people to think, "Losers. Grown men sitting in their basement pretending to be elves." For people outside of that sphere, they are essentially doing nothing. It doesn't impact them, they can't associate; the people playing WoW are the only ones who see it as doing something. Finally got your epic mount? People who don't play WoW don't care. And this can be extended to many other areas that Shirky places high interest in: blogging, captioning cats, etc.

In fact, the reason that this use of cognitive surplus is on the rise isn't some grand awakening: the cognitive requirements for use have just been lowered to the point where "mere mortals" can gain entry. Blogging is just an extension of the personal homepage that's been around for over a decade. Now, though, you don't need to know HTML. You go to blogger.com, fill in some details, click some buttons, and you've got a homepage. Type your thoughts in a box, hit another button, and you're suddenly a blogger. Because of this lowered entry requirement, anyone can put anything online without regard for its quality or usefulness, and I fail to see how this is cognitive surplus being put to good use.

Oh, and the sitcom is dead because of reality TV. Just as many viewers, a fraction of the cost. Absolutely genius.

I haven't shaved my beard in 3 years now, and I usually get profiled as Amish first, then Orthodox Jew (in Phoenix, AZ). This is while I'm wearing geeky shirts and a watch, and a cell phone, and PDA, etc.

Profiling doesn't work. Not shaving doesn't make me a meth addict/fundamentalist/biker/anything else.

For the sake of all of use with HD-DVD players (because HD-DVD is still cheaper to produce, damnit!), please stop saying it's dead... *sob*

"the new method of packing is reported to eliminate bottle breakage"

Yes, getting rid of the bottle usually does that.

Also, pickles in rubber. Lol.

Also, this.

What I want to know is what they plan to do with with the cannon...does it go on trial? Or have I been reading too much sci-fi lately?

"And remember: Robot hell is a real place, and you will go there at the first sign of resistance."

That is, unless you copy the bible for all eternity. I guess the turrets just do it with bullets.