Cognitive surplus watch

Thanks to the Internet, Americans are devoting less of their free time to watching television and more to creating socially useful stuff online. As if. A year ago, the Nielsen Company reported that Americans' TV viewing hit an all-time record high in the first quarter of 2010, with the average person spending 158 hours and 25 minutes a month in front of the idiot box.* That record didn't last long. Nielsen has released a new media-usage report, and it shows that in the first quarter of 2011, the average American watched TV for 158 hours and 47 minutes a month, up another 0.2 percent and, once again, a new all-time high.* Twenty years into the Web revolution, and we're boob-tubier than ever. But even that understates our video consumption. One of the Net's big effects has been to free TV programming from the living room and the bedroom. We can now watch the tube through our laptops and smartphones 24/7 - at work, in restaurants, and while strolling down the street. And that's just what we're doing. In the first quarter of 2011, the average American watched 4 hours and 33 minutes of streaming video on a computer, up a...