Clay Shirky on Web 2.0

When the Industrial Revolution came about, people suddenly found they had a lot of free time available to them. According to Clay Shirky first they spent that time consuming alcohol, then when TV was invented they soaked up much of their time in front of the set. The invention of the Internet has changed that. Now people are choosing to spend a lot of their free time in front of a computer participating on social sites, such as YouTube, Facebook and Wikipedia.

Shirky has published a video on Blip.tv about this subject. While the topic is interesting, I found Shirky’s anti-TV and pro-social networking on sites such as Wikipedia incredibly biased and a little silly. Wikipedia, while interesting to study from a cultural point of view, is incredibly useless and a phenomenal waste of human cognitive time that could be better put to use elsewhere. You can’t trust anything you read on Wikipedia.

Social networking may not be just a fad. It may be just the beginning of something that is here to stay. But arguing that sitting in front of a computer wasting time on useless social networking sites is better than sitting in front of the TV is laughable. Television, while having the potential for many to abuse also has many education channels and shows that are produced for people to easily understand and enjoy. Many brilliant writers and producers have created stories, such as “The Day After” (1983) and “The Burning Bed” (1984) that have shocked the world and made people really question what was going on in our society. TV and Web 2.0 both have the potential for people to misuse. But they both also have their potential to captivate and affect our society.

Web 2.0 does give people the power to create and produce and participate. Right now, it does have enormous potential, but whether it will be the savior of our society or the downfall is still unknown.

Michele Simon