In a recent piece at egdge.org Clay Shirky talks about the changes brought about by the internet and relates them to historical events. To make a historical analogy with the last major increase in the written word, you could earn a living in 1500 simply by knowing how to read and write. The spread of those abilities in the subsequent century had the curious property of making literacy both more essential and less professional; literacy became critical at the same time as the scribes lost their jobs. It is our misfortune to live through the largest increase in expressive capability in the history of the human race, a misfortune because surplus always breaks more things than scarcity. The mere fact of being able to publish to a global audience is the new literacy, formerly valuable, now so widely available that you can’t make any money with the basic capability any more. I know that this line was tweeted a lot, but it seems that many people missed the point. He wasn’t saying publishing is a new literacy. He is comparing publishing to the historical aspect of being literate. He adds some clarification in an interview with James Mustich and Andrew Keen on
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