tapping into the Social Surplus
Internet thinker and writer Clay Shirky posted a fabulous talk he gave recently on his website: Gin, Television, and Social Surplus - go on and read it if you haven’t.
His story at the end about the kid looking for the mouse attached to the TV mirrors how my own kids approach TV and media viewing. It’s even more incestuous in our house than for most people, with my hybrid computer/TV setup (and the only TV hooked up), but my kids have some interesting disconnects that wouldn’t have occurred to me, being of the TV generation rather than the PC generation. The kids ask to watch TV when they sometimes mean movies, and get frustrated when we can’t pause live TV. They also get bored watching live shows and want to search for something else instead on youtube. When the digital signal sometimes flakes out, Fiona will say that it just needs to load for a minute (as youtube does on my slow computer).
I was proud the other day when Fiona said that she wanted to make her own movie to post to youtube - she’s growing up as a member of the participatory media. Instead of talking at the office about the latest episode of Lost, they’ll talk about a friend’s new video posting live from vacation or the latest group blog they’ve started to share information about raising goats in the city or something. The common criticism of the internet is that it sucks up people’s time, and that’s a valid thing. But better to join in on something, anything online than to die stuck to your couch.
For me and even more so for my kids, the internet will replace TV and compliment their lives rather than replacing parts of it as TV did for previous generations. I’ve made new friends online that i spend real, in-person time with through this blog and other forums; TV never did that. Used properly, the internet is a living library that we all create and archive and search as needed. I’ve certainly killed evenings being online, but there’s almost always something to show for it beyond, for example, which American Idol was kicked off this week.
Turning the TV off gives me extra time every day to play with the kids, pick up around the house, fix bikes, and figure out how to build LED bike lights. When i show friends a project i’ve built, the reaction is never “where did you find the time for that?”, but more often questions about where i found the information online about it so they can try it too. Maybe i have unusually active and curious friends, but i like to think that we’re just ahead of the curve on this, and that our kids will be connected to each other and society in ways we can’t imagine. Now, the privacy implications of that are something that i wrestle with, but i’ll bet they don’t. I’m getting old, after all, and i have brain cells that are wasting their time holding on to endless hours of Hogan’s Heroes reruns.