July 6, 2012
The always-excellent Clay Shirky closed out this year’s TEDGlobal (and with it, this unexpectedly monumental wrap-up of the conference.) He chose to focus on the expansion of the media with a message that reassured us that all the hubbub is to be expected. “More media always means more argument,” he said firmly. “That’s what happens when media space expands.” Then he focused on the open source movement to show how those on the edges fly the standard for upcoming innovation. Humor, too. “Look around the edges and see people experimenting with the political ramifications of the system,” he said, recounting how someone uploaded a tool for detecting naturally occurring haiku in State Department prose after Wikileaks. Yet there’s an important disconnect for us all to contemplate. As he put it: “The people experimenting don’t have legislative power. The people with legislative power are not experimenting with participation.” This is a problem we should all consider a little more deeply, even as I attempt to recover from writing nearly 27,000 words over the course of four days. [Photo: James Duncan Davidson]

The always-excellent Clay Shirky closed out this year’s TEDGlobal (and with it, this unexpectedly monumental wrap-up of the conference.) He chose to focus on the expansion of the media with a message that reassured us that all the hubbub is to be expected. “More media always means more argument,” he said firmly. “That’s what happens when media space expands.” Then he focused on the open source movement to show how those on the edges fly the standard for upcoming innovation. Humor, too. “Look around the edges and see people experimenting with the political ramifications of the system,” he said, recounting how someone uploaded a tool for detecting naturally occurring haiku in State Department prose after Wikileaks. Yet there’s an important disconnect for us all to contemplate. As he put it: “The people experimenting don’t have legislative power. The people with legislative power are not experimenting with participation.” This is a problem we should all consider a little more deeply, even as I attempt to recover from writing nearly 27,000 words over the course of four days.

[Photo: James Duncan Davidson]

9:50pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLv7dxOrZ51-
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(Notes: 13)
  
Filed under: Clay Shirky TEDGlobal media disruption technology open source 
January 18, 2012

As the anti-SOPA/PIPA-prompted blackout affects many part of the web today, do take the 13 minutes it takes to watch media commentator Clay Shirky explain why SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) are a “nuclear” assault on the average citizen’s democratic rights. As Shirky puts it:

The real threat to the enactment of PIPA and SOPA is our ability to share things with one another. What PIPA and SOPA risk doing is taking a centuries-old legal concept—innocent until proven guilty—and reversing it—guilty until proven innocent. “You can’t share until you show us that you are not sharing something we don’t like.” Suddenly the burden of proof for legal vs illegal falls affirmatively on us and on the services that might be offering us any new capabilities. And if it costs even a dime to police a user, that will crush a service with a hundred million users.

This is a cogent, clear, well-reasoned version of the argument from the anti-SOPA movement, and it’s one that we need to understand and act upon. As Shirky concludes,

Time Warner has called. They want us all back on the couch, just consuming, not producing, not sharing. We should say no.

4:41pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLv7dxE_JP2R
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(Notes: 33)
  
Filed under: SOPA PIPA TED technology policy innovation Internet sharing Clay Shirky