by 2004, the average American spent $770.95 annually on services like cable television, Internet connectivity and video games, according to data from the Census Bureau. By 2008, that number rose to $903, outstripping inflation. By the end of this year, it is expected to have grown to $997.07. Add another $1,000 or more for cellphone service and the average family is spending as much on entertainment over devices as they are on dining out or buying gasoline.
via NYT.
With food and gas there's a natural limit to how much you can (over)eat and drive. With information it's only the time when you are not asleep. We can pack a lot of bits from 3D movies into those hours.
tags: information, entertainment, distribution, payload, economics, niche construction,
2 comments:
Can we compute the theoretical maximum / saturation limit on the information units that a person can consume? With conventional food intake, that limit is pretty well understood, driven by physiology, bounded by obesity rates, etc.
I'd be very curious to know, firstly, what the distribution looks like for information consumption capacity of randomly chosen individuals (obviously, there will be information consumption giants, and easily confused shlubs like me).
Secondly, I'd like to understand how the volume of information is parsed into categories. For example, a fixed number of information bits can set off considerable thought, which can rapidly saturate the consumer. Contrast that with some trivia and various other superficial types of information that don't necessarily trigger extensive introspective thought.
Children are information consumption giants. Just think about how quickly they learn a new language or technology.
Our means of communications are still woefully inadequate to represent real world. Compare how much information we perceive while hiking in the forest: continuous 3D objects, smells, wind, sounds, etc., to what we can write as a report about hiking in the forest. Unless you already had a similar experience, you can't reconstitute it from words or pictures alone.
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