There is an excellent article in the June issue of Wired Magazine called: "Cognitive Surplus: The Great Spare-Time Revolution". (http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/05/ff_pink_shirky/)
I encourage everyone to read it. The premise of the article is that Americans who once spent their spare time watching television are now redirecting a lot of that time toward, "activities that are less about consuming and more about engaging.
The article goes on to say that: "All the articles, edits and arguments on Wikipedia represent around 100 million hours of human labor." If you think about that number, no publishing house in the world could have created it.
The question I have to ask is this going to be a fad, or are people really changing their habits from consuming of information to engaging with others in the acquiring and distributing of information. It will be interesting to see how this turns out. . .
Or are we just consuming information differently? I know I've lost many an hour late at night, when I should have just gone to bed, surfing the web aimlessly for something that will entertain me.
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