Clay Shirky at TED Oxford, July 2009.

There are only four periods in the last 500 years where media has changed enough to qualify for the label Revolution. The first one is the famous one, the printing press. Movable type, oil-based inks, that whole complex of innovations that made printing possible and turned Europe upside-down, starting in the middle of the 1400s. Then a couple of hundred years ago there was innovation in two way communication. Conversational media, first the telegraph, then the telephone. Slow, text based conversations, then real-time voice based conversations. Then, about 150 years ago, there was a revolution in recorded media other than print. First photos, then recorded sound, then movies, all encoded onto physical objects. And finally about 100 years ago, the harnessing of electromagnetic spectrum to send sound and images through the air, radio and television. This is the media landscape as we knew it in the 20th century. This is what those of us of a certain age grew up with, and are used to.

Please watch the talk. It’s not too long.

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