The original article discussed decreasing viewership for the four networks. I’m not sure overall television viewing is decreasing. In fact (and going back to the Statistical Abstract, specifically Table 1110 at http://www.census.gov/prod/2006pubs/07statab/infocomm.pdf), it seems to be holding steady, while consumption of other media is increasing somewhat. Table 1112 at the same pdf does show a large difference by age in the proportion of persons who access the Internet.

Around here, schools have taken to having “turn off your TV” weeks. That was big at the Montessori my older son used to attend. My wife was given to proposing that, since there is much more mind-numbing material in books than on TV, they ought to schedule a book-burning week as well.

I very much envy cultures well-trained in the art of conversation (sans TV), and marvel at educational policy that supports it, as they do in France.

The marriage point is an interesting one. U.S. rates are indeed decreasing, but they appear to still be higher than those for other “Western” countries (see Table 1312 at http://www.census.gov/prod/2006pubs/07statab/intlstat.pdf). I was surprised to see marriage rates increased in Denmark between 1980 and 2000. (I don’t know how these would look standardized for age, which might explain some differences or trends.) I suspect some broader social phenomena (or changes in values) are affecting marriage rates more than IT, but IT may well be boosting these trends.

This post and Peter’s subsequent on the diffucion of IT in the workplace makes me wonder what effect IT has had on the workplace. Eight years ago, I began work for a California employer that, five and a half years ago, generously allowed me to do so from Illinois so that I could address some family-care issues. Another California colleague will soon move to Seattle and work from there. A college friend who “works” in DC for another employer has been doing so from Montana for several years now. None of us could have done this twenty, fifteen, or maybe even ten years ago.

The New Yorker recently had a fascinating article on commuting (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_paumgarten?printable=true, though I’m guessing O&M readers are so hip, or at least so much more hip than I am, that nearly all of them have already read it). Being more of the sociological and less of the economist type, I was particularly intrigued by the effects of commuting on social capital. Here’s an excerpt on this, citing Robert Putnam:

“Putnam likes to imagine that there is a triangle, its points comprising where you sleep, where you work, and where you shop. In a canonical English village, or in a university town, the sides of that triangle are very short: a five-minute walk from one point to the next. In many American cities, you can spend an hour or two travelling each side. ‘You live in Pasadena, work in North Hollywood, shop in the Valley,’ Putnam said. ‘Where is your community?’ The smaller the triangle, the happier the human, as long as there is social interaction to be had.”

Which leads me back to wondering what are the effects of IT on the workplace and its social interactions. Has it allowed for a noticeable increase in “long-distance” workers (like myself and my California colleague)? How does this affect the triangle Putnam notes? How might the flexibility that IT can provide affect the ability of a firm to attract and retain workers? (I can’t deny the appeal of accumulating more economic “capital” in the Midwest, with its lower housing costs, than I could on the West Coast . . .) Within a more traditional workplace, how much does IT affect social interactions, with e-mail and texting replacing face-to-face or even phone conversations that might be more wide-ranging?