Nick Carr and Clay Shirky debating the value of television

Terrific reply from Nicholas Carr to Clay Shirky  on the whole "television as gin" thing:

"What I’m pointing out is that people were every bit as capable of living rich, multidimensional, interesting, creative, and “participative” lives before the web came along as they are today – and a lot of people did live such lives. And they often lived them even while spending considerable portions of their time watching TV or drinking gin or sitting in a lotus position intentionally frittering away their 'cognitive surplus.' (There’s a creepy kind of neo-Puritanism at work in your calculations of how productively we’re 'deploying' our “cognitive surplus,” but that’s a different story.)"