And most of that activity is not even interactive.  The vast majority of the time we are just passively absorbing content that someone else has created.  This very much reminds me of the movie "the Matrix", but with a twist.  Instead of humans being forcefully connected to "the Matrix", we are all willingly connecting ourselves to it.  There is a giant system that defines our reality for us, and the length of time that the average American spends connected to it just continues to keep growing.  In fact, there are millions upon millions of us that simply do not "feel right" unless there is at least something on in the background.  Just think about it.  How much time do you spend each day with all electronic devices completely turned off?  Thanks to technology, we live at a time when more news, information and entertainment is at our fingertips than ever before, and we are consuming more of it than ever before.  But this also gives a tremendous amount of power to those that create all of this news, information and entertainment.