> "It's surprising how often conversations with friends and strangers revolve around our common culture."

Fairly common (because, I suppose, birds of a feather...) but none the less not quite the same as the previous shared experience. That is, you saw Program X when I saw it. Same date and time. And not all that many years previous, everyone was in the same room watching the same TV.

I'm no Luddite, but I often wonder about the effects of personalization and the loss of the shared experience. If you remove live sports, how many (media) experiences now are common / shared?