only option??

Before I lose this thought, I decided I better blog about it...though I've already blogged recently.
I re-watched the Clay Shirky vid (shared by Paul) before checking out the book Bill has included in his resources for our Cog Strand.  I was amused by the video...I followed the video and though I flinched a couple times at his proposals for why 'the masses' did certain things in history (these are THEORIES, Clay is certainly not the expert on this topic), I tended to agree with him for the most part.
And then he lost my support totally.
He tried to convince me that HIS ONLY OPTION, at one point in his life, was to spend his FREE TIME watching Gilligan's Island (because internet, etc. was not created yet).    I'm calling bullshit on this one.  This guy doesn't look much older (if?) than me.  We didn't have TV when I was young.  We played outside.  We played as siblings, with each other inside.  We played "house" / "school" / "construction site" -- make believe games and used what toys, objects around us that we had....concrete items.  We didn't look to an outside source for entertainment....we looked within ourselves for the creativity.
What a shallow statement for a person to make.  That he had no option but to watch TV.
People STILL have that option, choice, decision.  It's a choice for me to read online, post in blogs and learn technology.  I also made a choice to study history in hard books, with real lectures and take notes by hand (sometimes, usually I just listened).  I choose to NOT play video games in my free time -- I don't watch TV either!!  I watch very few shows and when I do, it will be a hyped-up political event/speech...or a long awaited sporting match. 
I have mountains to climb, I have rivers and lakes to kayak....there are fish that are waiting to be on my hook and in my belly, there's some poor innocent deer waiting to be sighted-in by my .308 and eventually in my cabinet as jerky for the next camping trip to the Olympics or the Cascades.
Point?  There is a helluva lot more to do with free time than watch TV or play video games -- and maybe THAT is what we should be promoting?  Just a random thought there....we may all be out of jobs if we promote that too hard...but education can certainly benefit from a vamped up type of technology.

Again, some supposed tech guru has lost my respect.  But not totally - I mean, I'm still down with a lot of his ideas.  I suppose we aren't all perfect and I like much of what he says.  But I just want it on paper (LOL! on blog 'paper') that Clay lost some points on this side of the fence.