Clay Shirky being brilliantly engaging.

Apparently, when Britain first industrialised, for a long time the way people dealt with the trauma of suddenly being in urban density was.. gin. Gin would be wheeled on trollies through the slums. It took a generation for an infrastructure to be created that actually took advantage of urban density.

Shirky argues that TV is basically the 20th Century version of gin trolleys. Desperate Housewives is a cognitive heatsink. But now we're moving beyond merely passive consumption, and something interesting is going to happen.

Hat tip: Charles Frith