Media is a triathlon

I missed Here Comes Everybody author Clay Shirky speaking at Web2.0, but as I suspected, there are multiple ways (including video) to actually experience the content without having made the trek north to SF to be there in person.

Now that Clay's posted his "lightly edited" transcription of his Gin, Television and Social Surplus presentation, I can call out the money quote (emphasis below is mine):

Media in the 20th century was run as a single race--consumption. How much can we produce? How much can you consume? Can we produce more and you'll consume more? And the answer to that question has generally been yes. But media is actually a triathlon, it's three different events. People like to consume, but they also like to produce, and they like to share.

And what's astonished people who were committed to the structure of the previous society, prior to trying to take this surplus and do something interesting, is that they're discovering that when you offer people the opportunity to produce and to share, they'll take you up on that offer. It doesn't mean that we'll never sit around mindlessly watching Scrubs on the couch. It just means we'll do it less.

As a new entrant into the field of triathlon, I totally get the analogy here.

And just like training for the sport of triathlon (swim, bike, run), you're likely to already be good at one of the activities, but you've got to focus on all three events to finish the race.

I came into triathlon training as a better biker than a runner, and I was a non-swimmer. So I leveraged my skill on the bike with getting better at the run. And I had to focus a lot of time and energy on learning to swim.

Seems there's a similar approach to be taken with media triathlon training, too.

I dare say most of us are excellent consumers. After all, we've got decades of training to get good at sitting back and being entertained.

The "sharing" is likely the next easiest skill to pick up, and good creators of content, professional or otherwise, knowingly bake the "share" feature into everything they create.

It's the production that is potentially the hardest skill to learn, yet the tools for producing are getting easier to master all the time, too.

To produce something like the Wikipedia, Shirky (and Martin Wattenberg at IBM) have estimated it's taken over 100 million hours of thought. That sounds like a lot, until you realize that Americans spend 100 million hours in front of the television each weekend just watching the advertisements!

I'm astounded to think what might happen as we turn these couch potatoes consumers into media triathletes.

Heck, if I can do it swimming, biking and running, I'm sure others become triathletes flexing their mouse.