What powers the internet...

And I thought it was just a tiny IT guy running off his Doritos gut in a hamster wheel...

The Internet is powered by bored office workers who sit at their desks forwarding emails, surfing the web, reading and writing blogs, and IMing funny links to their friends. These people have inadvertently created the Bored at Work Network (BWN). It is amazing to me that the BWN can distribute media to literally millions of people each day without any centralized coordination. The BWN is bigger than CNN, bigger than Fox, bigger than NBC, CBS, or ABC and it is powered primarily by people goofing off at work. Some of these bored office workers are doing more than forwarding silly emails and web sites. They are also building world class encyclopedias, operating systems, and web servers. They are vanquishing political leaders like Trent Lott or media figures like Dan Rather. And when they go home for the night, their computers are still chugging away finding life on other planets and curing cancer. --Jonah Peretti, in Gothamist