Gangnam Style and Youtube

Some days ago, 'Gangnam Style' - the music video created by PSY (South Korean pop star in case you didn't know it already) surpassed two billion views on Youtube. In case you breezed past that number, here it is again - TWO BILLION! The Economist magazine did an article on this event wherein it states that those many views approximately equal to 140 million hours spent on watching a pop star performing a sideways shuffle and an air lasso. It further goes on to list the time taken by some engineering marvels that have been created by mankind and then taking a position that the 140 million hours otherwise spent on watching the Gangam Style would have been better off being spent on some productive tasks.

You can read this article on the following link; btw - the reader's comments refuting the Economist's argument are also interesting :-)

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2014/06/daily-chart-1

Note:- Google engineers had to change the memory space of the site's video-views counter from 32 bit to 64 bit in order to accommodate this unheard before popularity of any Youtube video!