When I tell friends that, chez Tosh, we tend to watch TV while using our laptops as well, they tend to ask - with concerned faces - after the state of the household. So, speaking at Internet World earlier this week, I was relieved to find we’re not that unusual. Panel chair Mike Butcher asked who shared the habit; three-quarters of the room stuck their hands up. Hurrah.

That question, and some of the subsequent discussion, got me thinking about a talk given last week in San Francisco by Clay Shirky. It was, as ever, wildly clever, and re-reading it this week reminded me of some of its wonderful sense. Do go read it all.

Shirky sums up, with great elegance, where people are getting the time to build the web - to read web pages and watch YouTube, create Wikipedia pages, upload those Flickr pictures, issue pokes on Facebook and play games across the ether. It’s all to do with the “cognitive surplus” that has, for decades, been used up or masked by TV (it used to be suppressed by gin). We’ll “spend” some of that TV-viewing surplus doing other things online, thinks Shirky.

“It doesn’t mean that we’ll never sit around mindlessly watching Scrubs on the couch. It just means we’ll do it less.

And this is the other thing about the size of the cognitive surplus we’re talking about. It’s so large that even a small change could have huge ramifications. Let’s say that everything stays 99 percent the same, that people watch 99 percent as much television as they used to, but 1 percent of that is carved out for producing and for sharing. The Internet-connected population watches roughly a trillion hours of TV a year. That’s about five times the size of the annual U.S. consumption. One per cent of that is 100 Wikipedia projects per year worth of participation.

I think that’s going to be a big deal. Don’t you?”

A big deal, indeed, and especially if you own a media company which, previously, filled some of that cognitive gap - either with TV, or another product. Huge, unifying cultural events remain important - hence the rise of “watercooler TV” talent shows and the importance of big sporting events to broadcasters. At the other end, narrow niche content that’s very appealing to a small number of people should also thrive.

The pressure, as far as I can see, goes on the squishy middle; generalist entertainment or information that might pass the time but fulfills no specific need, and which hits no heights in terms of quality. Unfortunately, a lot of traditional media content fits that bill, and the web gives us access to the very best examples of it anyway.

This is why the ongoing shift in media consumption presents such challenges. It’s not just YouTube hurting TV. It’s not just Craigslist hurting newspapers. If you’re generalist and, because you’re not a very good generalist, have relied on geographical monopoly to stay alive, then… life’s going to be hard, and Shirky has done a very good job of explaining why.

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