January 14, 2011

clay on wikipedia

Clay Shirky pens a paean to Wikipedia on the occasion of its 10th birthday. I like this bit: “Wikipedia is best understood not as a product with an organisation behind it, but as an activity that happens to leave an encyclopedia in its wake.” I wonder how well you could apply this thinking to other forms of media. Thought experiment: “The New York Times / Gawker / 30 Rock / the TED Conference is best understood not as a product, but as an activity that happens to leave ______ in its wake.” And then use that frame of reference to generate a list of related activities.