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Today's Tidbit: Americans Spent More Time Watching TV Ads Than It Took to Build Wikipedia

Jan 19, 2013 07:48 PM

A child looking upwards in black and white.

Wikipedia is an astonishing resource that provides an enormous amount of information to billions of users.

Even more amazing is that it was created by volunteers who, according to Clay Shirky, put in one hundred million hours of time writing and editing Wikipedia pages.

But that effort trifles in comparison to the amount of time Americans spend watching television—two hundred billion hours every year.

As Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler put it, "we spend a Wikipedia worth of time every weekend in the U.S. watching advertisements alone."

References:

"Abundance", 2012 book by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler, page 83
"Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age" 2010 book by Clay Shirky

Photo by skippyjon

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