Is the primary beneficiary of modern productivity and efficiency gains really the sitcom? The laugh track? Is this the best we can do with the scientific and industrial gains of the the past century? I hope not. Recently, Clay Shirky has wrote a great piece on the sitcom’s role in developing modernity. It’s called, “Gin, Television and Social Surplus.” Read it.

In his essay, Shirky raises a shocking fact. Americans spend two hundred billion hours a year watching TV. Count it however you like, 200 billion hours, 12 trillion minutes or 545 billion episodes of Urkel, Arnold Drummond, the Brady family, Uncle Joey... Wow.

Shirky asks, What will be?  What will the future look like when our generation of content consumers, the sitcom watchers(!), is supplanted by a generation which has grown up with a computer and mouse not just consuming content, but also producing and sharing it. With so much time wasted, a tiny 1% shift in behavior could have a massive impact on our society. Good things will happen.

And while I just discovered “Gin, Television and Social Surplus” today, it fits nicely into a commitment I made to myself this past weekend to read, write and photograph more. I’m jump starting my reading habit (I’ll leave my more creative endeavors to develop at a more organic pace). The self-made summer syllabus is 9 books or 3,489 pages long. And you’re invited to come along for the ride.

In theory, I love to read books. In practice, I’m dreadful at making time for it. Too much TV, too many magazines, too much time disappearing into the ether. Too often I save reading for bedtime. I’m too tired. After three pages, I’m snoozing, rereading paragraphs, forgetting characters and feeling like I’m making backwards progress. No more. The sitcom induced fugue is over. The “Summer Reading Challenge” begins!

Here’s my list of my picks:

Fiction:

• Empire Falls by Richard Russo.
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
• Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson.

Religion & Spirituality:

• Buddha by Deepak Chopra.
• The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.
• The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright.
• The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine by Anne Harrington.

Other Non-Fiction

• Fantasyland by Sam Walker
• Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
• The Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun

In order to complete my list by Labor Day, I’ll need to average 27.3 pages per day. Daunting (given my past habits). To keep track, I’m adding a “Pages Read” counter to the “On The Bedside Table” section of this blog. It’s text for now, but I’ll work toward a more graphical representation. Along the way, I may be some book substitutions, but I’ll only allow for a 10% deviation in total pages.

In the spirit of “Gin…”, I’ll share my thoughts on the books here. And I’d love to have you join me. Let me know if you have any plans to read any of the books above. Who’s with me?