What I think is coming instead are much more organic ways of organizing information than our current categorization schemes allow, based on two units - the link, which can point to anything, and the tag, which is a way of attaching labels to links. The strategy of tagging - free-form labeling, without regard to categorical constraints - seems like a recipe for disaster, but as the Web has shown us, you can extract a surprising amount of value from big messy data sets.
Clay ShirkySociety doesn't need newspapers. What we need is journalism... When we shift our attention from โsave newspapersโ to โsave societyโ, the imperative changes from โpreserve the current institutionsโ to โdo whatever works.โ And what works today isnโt the same as what used to work.
Clay ShirkyThe great tension in media has always been that freedom and quality are conflicting goals.
Clay Shirky