This made me think of two things:

Steven Johnson's Everything Bad Is Good for You, which charts the increasing complexity of television plotlines from Dragnet to The Sopranos (and has awesome illustrative graphs). Particularly, he says everyone is developing a taste for Nerdfotainment, including non-nerds, and it's making everyone smarter as a result.

J.J. Abrams' TED talk on "mystery boxes", which made the round on some blogs a while back (available on their podcast). This was super interesting, because it revealed that Abrams was not only comfortable with uncertainty, but that he often prizes it over certainty.

With Cloverfield, we are seeing the dawn of mass market entertainment that may not tie up every narrative thread, because: (a) There are too many threads, and (b) Creators are unwilling to fully explain the story. Nerds, of course, love this; it will be curious to see if everyone else will go along for the ride.