Ted Hope turned me on to Clay Shirky's remarkable essay. It seems to clarify many ideas that have been floating the ether recently, and has some far-reaching ramifications.
Actually, Shirky's piece is deeply indebted to the work of Joseph Tainter, who in 1988 wrote a book called The Collapse of Complex Societies. Haven't read it yet. It's on the way. (Isn't it nice to be turned on to a new major thinker?)
Shirky takes Tainter's ideas, which apply to the collapse of complex societies, and lays them on top of his own ideas on the demise of the old media forms - TV and movies in particular. Some network TV types want to know how to save the old business model of sitcoms and commercials. Shirky not only tells them what they don't want to hear, but what they cannot hear, to wit: their paradigm is doomed. Moreover, that is a good thing. Just as many of the citizens of the Roman Empire actually saw their nutrition actually improve after the collapse of the Empire, (and the demise of parasitic elites) so too will new forms spring forth from the ash heap of the three networks.
Shirky paraphrases:
"Tainter’s story goes like this: a group of people, through a combination of social organization and environmental luck, finds itself with a surplus of resources. Managing this surplus makes society more complex—agriculture rewards mathematical skill, granaries require new forms of construction, and so on.
Early on, the marginal value of this complexity is positive—each additional bit of complexity more than pays for itself in improved output—but over time, the law of diminishing returns reduces the marginal value, until it disappears completely. At this point, any additional complexity is pure cost.
Tainter’s thesis is that when society’s elite members add one layer of bureaucracy or demand one tribute too many, they end up extracting all the value from their environment it is possible to extract and then some.
The ‘and them some’ is what causes the trouble. Complex societies collapse because, when some stress comes, those societies have become too inflexible to respond."
The phrase "those societies" can refer to any number of entrenched elites - pick your favorite: the newspaper business, the Senate, either political party, the American Empire, Europe, the American labor movement, the conservative movement, the progressive movement, feminism, the oil industry, advertising, academia, your PC's operating system, your marriage, the stock market.
If you are a doom and gloom pessimist, it is a far-reaching paradigm. Almost one-size fits all. Things fall apart because they become too complex. The complexity distracts from the central imperative of survival.
Actually, Shirky's piece is deeply indebted to the work of Joseph Tainter, who in 1988 wrote a book called The Collapse of Complex Societies. Haven't read it yet. It's on the way. (Isn't it nice to be turned on to a new major thinker?)
Shirky takes Tainter's ideas, which apply to the collapse of complex societies, and lays them on top of his own ideas on the demise of the old media forms - TV and movies in particular. Some network TV types want to know how to save the old business model of sitcoms and commercials. Shirky not only tells them what they don't want to hear, but what they cannot hear, to wit: their paradigm is doomed. Moreover, that is a good thing. Just as many of the citizens of the Roman Empire actually saw their nutrition actually improve after the collapse of the Empire, (and the demise of parasitic elites) so too will new forms spring forth from the ash heap of the three networks.
Shirky paraphrases:
"Tainter’s story goes like this: a group of people, through a combination of social organization and environmental luck, finds itself with a surplus of resources. Managing this surplus makes society more complex—agriculture rewards mathematical skill, granaries require new forms of construction, and so on.
Early on, the marginal value of this complexity is positive—each additional bit of complexity more than pays for itself in improved output—but over time, the law of diminishing returns reduces the marginal value, until it disappears completely. At this point, any additional complexity is pure cost.
Tainter’s thesis is that when society’s elite members add one layer of bureaucracy or demand one tribute too many, they end up extracting all the value from their environment it is possible to extract and then some.
The ‘and them some’ is what causes the trouble. Complex societies collapse because, when some stress comes, those societies have become too inflexible to respond."
The phrase "those societies" can refer to any number of entrenched elites - pick your favorite: the newspaper business, the Senate, either political party, the American Empire, Europe, the American labor movement, the conservative movement, the progressive movement, feminism, the oil industry, advertising, academia, your PC's operating system, your marriage, the stock market.
If you are a doom and gloom pessimist, it is a far-reaching paradigm. Almost one-size fits all. Things fall apart because they become too complex. The complexity distracts from the central imperative of survival.
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