In Defense Of "Doing Nothing"

Jonah Lehrer finds Shirky's latest book wanting:

While Shirky pokes fun at [lolcats:], he still argues that it
a dramatic improvement over the passive entertainment of television. "The real gap is between doing nothing and doing something, and someone making lolcats has bridged that

There are two things to say about this. The first is that theconsumption of culture is not always worthless. Is it really better toproduce yet another lolcat than watch The Wire? And what about...