"Every single year for the second half of the 20th century, the amount of television watched by humanity increased. Collectively, we now watch more than one trillion hours of television every year – something not entirely unlike, as Clay Shirky sees it, tipping the free time of the world's educated citizenry (their "cognitive surplus") down an intellectual plughole. It's not that television is evil, or even bad. It's just that, as a medium, it's incredibly good at soaking up leisure and producing very few tangible results. It tells stories, it makes people feel less alone, it passes the time. It is, Shirky ventures, a little like gin in 1720s London, helping people cope with modernity by gently blurring the edges of their reality." More by Tom Chatfield on The Guardian