Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Clay Shirky's Internet Writings
Clay Shirky's Internet Writings: "I find that whenever I waste time thinking about what I think should happen, it interferes with my ability to predict what’s going to happen. I do not have many illusions that ‘power to the people’ is an unalloyed good. There are obvious problems with any such system, even such basic ones as democracy and free markets.
More than once, new technologies have held out the promise of wider participation by citizens, only to be corralled by a new set of legal or economic realities, and the net, which threatens many vested interests all at once, will be no exception.
Nevertheless, despite a ‘two steps forward, one step back’ progression, we are living through a potentially enormous shift in the amount of leverage the many have over the few. It is my aim to chronicle these changes as they happen, and to provide a framework, built from observation, which aids both interpretation and prediction.
- clay shirky"
More than once, new technologies have held out the promise of wider participation by citizens, only to be corralled by a new set of legal or economic realities, and the net, which threatens many vested interests all at once, will be no exception.
Nevertheless, despite a ‘two steps forward, one step back’ progression, we are living through a potentially enormous shift in the amount of leverage the many have over the few. It is my aim to chronicle these changes as they happen, and to provide a framework, built from observation, which aids both interpretation and prediction.
- clay shirky"
