Web of receipt ... Spider-Man 3

The history of ideas is littered with the corpses of those who have tried to define culture. They include thinkers from the left (Raymond Williams, Richard Hoggart) as well as the right (TS Eliot, Ezra Pound). Only one thing is certain. Culture is not what is measured by the Entertainment Retailers Association's new cross-media culture chart.

Except as an indicator of the most general trends this chart, which brings together sales of DVDs, books, CDs and computer games in one rundown, is of little value. True culture cannot be measured in this way because it is always approaching the centre from the periphery, moving by stealth from unnoticed corners and trailing edges.

You would probably get a better sense of the way things are going by analyzing small poetry magazines around the world than looking at this list. Or as Shelley more elegantly put it, "the most unfailing herald, companion and follower of the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in opinion or institution, is poetry."

Commercial value is another thing but even here the chart's usefulness is questionable. What is the point in comparing media product types of different unit cost and distribution mechanism? The chart's compilers admit as much in explaining the omission of Spider-Man 3, the top computer game in the first six months of the year.

"Spider-Man 3 may not have made it into the top 20 by volume, but if the chart was ranked by sales value, it would most likely be in the top three," said Steve Redmond of the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA).

And the world be a better place, no doubt.