haniblog

The first time I heard the name Clay Shirky was through a post titled Gin, Television and Social Surplus on Daring Fireball. I watched his Web 2.0 presentation and was struck by his clarity of thought, the way his arguments made sense and the way I would go “Yeah!” at every salient point he would make.

Again, through Daring Fireball, I read Shirky’s latest essay on newspapers, journalism and the revolution we’re going through. This is a must read. It compares the state of online publishing to what happened around 1500 A.D., right after Gutenberg invented movable type and the printing press. Newspapers, advertising, walled-garden content, micropayments, subscriptions… it’s all there in this essay.

If you have some free time I would highly recommend reading this and then watching Clay Shirky’s videos on YouTube. Even the titles of the videos make you think! How about this one: It’s Not Information Overload. It’s Filter Failure. You immediately have an “A-ha!” moment just reading that title!

I think his book Here Comes Everybody is one I’ll read on holiday.