The Cognitive Surplus, Ctd

A reader writes:

That graphic is interesting, but it seems a bit misleading. 100 million hours may have been spent creating Wikipedia -- but a great many articles are based off the fact that people spent 200 million hours watching TV, updating pages on LOST, updating pages on The Golden Girls, writing biographies for M*A*S*H actors, etc.  And I wrote some of my finest theological writing last year because I'd spent 50 hours watching Battlestar Galactica and doing some reflection in response on the nature of humanity and what constitutes a human person.

So while I'm sure a great many of those 200 million hours weren't spent on deep thinking, I'm equally sure that labeling the entire 200 million hours as a waste of cognitive time isn't accurate either.  And I'm also certain, after many hours spent vegging by following endless Wikipedia links and editing in trivial information, that not every hour spent creating Wikipedia was time well spent.