Ditch the couch and find your mouse.

Clay Shirky, a writer, teacher, and Internet theorist, published the text of a speech he gave, "Gin, Television, and Social Surplus," on his blog last year. It's true; I have a passion for trio-list titles.

Shirky analyzes the "cognitive surplus" of societies and contrasts the differences in how free time has been used in the Western world in the Industrial Revolution (gin), the mid-20th century (television), and our current era (participation). Because the speech is cultural critique, because it provides a re-vision of history, and because hits its climax with a narrative that involves kids and culture, I excerpt it here.

I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago, and one of them was talking about sitting with his four-year-old daughter watching a DVD. And in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. That seems like a cute moment. Maybe she's going back there to see if Dora is really back there or whatever. But that wasn't what she was doing. She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, "What you doing?" And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, "Looking for the mouse."

Here's something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here's something four-year-olds know: Media that's targeted at you but doesn't include you may not be worth sitting still for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way change. Because four year olds, the people who are soaking most deeply in the current environment, who won't have to go through the trauma that I have to go through of trying to unlearn a childhood spent watching Gilligan's Island, they just assume that media includes consuming, producing and sharing.

Shirky tells a great story that supports an interesting theory. All is telling.