I was listening to writer Clay Shirky talk about cognitive surplus – the idea of spare brainpower in the world’s collective mind just sitting there waiting, wanting, to be harnessed.
He had a stand-out statistic that snagged my mind. I thought I would visualise it.
via Sullivan
I would estimate — based on my impressions from clicking around on Wikipedia — that roughly 30% of its entries are devoted to television shows.
Based on that assumption, of the 100 million hours spent creating Wikipedia, I would estimate that 30 million of those hours were spent writing wikipedia entries about televisions shows.
But in order to write those entries, the entry-writers needed to watch television. Therefore, a reduction in time spent watching television on the part of the human race will naturally result in a reduction of in the volume of entries in wikipedia, commensurate with the reduction of human interest in television.
Therefore, if more human brainpower were focused on writing new wikipedia articles, the volume of existing and new articles devoted to 30% of wikipedia’s content would concurrently shrink.
Would the two merely offset one another, in a perpetual zero-sum game?
‘Tis a puzzlement. Perhaps someone should write a Wikipedia article on the subject?
