Create Your Own Economy gets dramatically more compelling in Chapter 3, where Cowen hunkers down into an economic argument that cultural bits have gotten smaller now that the delivery and attendance costs are lower, and that as a result we're consuming a wider range of smaller bits of culture, and are happier because of it—because we can fit more pieces of culture into the puzzle of our lives.

Rather than just tout modern pop culture above classical masterpieces, the way lots of commentators have done, Cowen credits those masterpieces with great beauty and power, but argues that most of the time, we're not willing to take the extra trouble to consume them.

Most interesting of all is his idea that, instead of giving us shorter attention spans, these modern culture-bites (TV shows, blog posts, tweets) can give us a longer attention span: they reward us for staying with a source over time: tuning in for every episode of a show, or checking back to a blog week after week.

My view: in the face of all this, there is still some under-appreciated value in big culture, that is, really deeply-worked masterpieces. It's always been hard to consume those, and we've always needed to ask ourselves to watch a four-hour Hamlet rather than a bundle of eight TV shows, or rather six TV shows and two snack breaks.

When I was doing my PhD, I became aware of how much trouble I had focusing on a single problem for hours at a time—much more trouble than I had had as a teenager—and this frustrated me. I kept wondering if it was because of bad habits, like watching TV, that I'd let myself into, or if it was just age dulling my mind.

Cowen's argument would be that, if we have trouble focusing on a four-hour Hamlet, it's just because we're aware of other, cheaper culture that we can get to. But does this mean we'll be less well-prepared as a society to tackle really big problems?