In the debate currently raging over the future of newspapers, the man of the hour is Clay Shirky, consultant, author (Here Comes Everybody), and digital pioneer whose brilliant essay "Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable" has generated more buzz and feedback than anything written on the subject in many moons.
In this TED talk from 2005, Shirky argues that emerging communications technologies enabling loosely coordinated groups pose a terminal threat to traditional institutions and will lead to a massive readjustment, one arena at a time, of the way society works. Indeed, says Shirky, we are in the beginning stages of a revolution that will lead not from Point A to Point B, but from Point A to...chaos. The good news, according to Shirky, is that it will only be fifty years of chaos. (Filmed: July 2005. Running time: 20:48)
-- Mitch Nauffts
