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TED on Sunday: Clay Shirky on Epochal Change

March 29, 2009

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

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Posted by blogreader  |   April 05, 2009 at 06:51 PM

Thanks for posting this. Not only is it timely and relevant, it stinks of a truth that we're only beginning to grasp : the notion of not replicating institutions of old to meet the challenge of the new world but to look for new paths, systems, paradigms.
The utility of social networking and "sharing" is a key aspect to the future of knowledge acquisition.

Can you have Shirky comment in 2009 on your post?

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