A multitude of tweets from people like Tim O’Reilly and Nion McEvoy pointed me to this excellent piece on the end of analog news by (past seminar speaker) Clay Shirky. Not to be missed, here is an excerpt:
“When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.
There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie.”
I guess Long Now should start planning our next technological funeral event. The funeral for the analog newspaper.
