Unfortunately, the world is full of advocates in pursuit of data.

Clay Shirky is one of them.

McLuhan said, “First we shape our tools, thereafter they shape us.” We never sufficiently understand the changes our tool-shaping ways create except in hindsight. Yet, it is vitally important that we have effective criticism and understanding of technology-mediated cultural change, lest we be subjugated by despots who do understand and seize control of them.

The global internetworking of our species in a vast web of communication is the most profound technology-mediated change we’ve undergone since Gutenberg. In the face of it, the appellation “TV wasteland” still serves as a convenient shorthand to call up the cultural passivity that phase engendered. If every age can be defined by what it wastes, what exactly did we waste in the vast TV wasteland? Perhaps our individual empowerment to create and to voice our individual creativity, absent the impediments of huge printing presses and broadcast networks.

But more important, if we give credence to the notion that our entering the Gutenberg Galaxy engendered individualism, the Renaissance, the rise of the sciences, Capitalism, then what monumental changes can we expect from the Internet that we’re all increasingly immersed in? I for one am anxious to know and welcome deep thinking and insight from people like Clay Shirky.

I also welcome alternative voices like Jaron Lanier, Nicholas Carr and even (begrudgingly) Andrew Keen to this debate. They call into question what we stand to lose if we uncritically give in to The Borg of collective intelligence and they help to shape our real understanding.

But I don’t see Shirky as being uncritical of the repercussions of technology. And I challenge you to point out a paragraph in one of his books where he exhibits the kind of obscurantism of which you accuse him. Personally, I find him to write clearly and cogently and to give shape to concepts that very often feel just on the tip of my tongue, but as yet unformed. That’s valuable.

Further, please point to where in his writings you find the uncritical techno-boosterism of which you accuse him. In fact, I wonder if you have actually read his books or are just shooting from the hip. ;-)

Shirky is just the latest in a long history of longwinded poseurs confusing worship of the new with deep thought, using arcane multi-syllabic words to feign advanced intelligence

A mob lynching is not better justice than a court of law just because the former is a near-spontaneous, shared, crowd-sourced collective action, and the former is a hidebound archaic top-down judicial structure

A play written and performed by committee, or on a wiki, is not by definition more relevant or even contemporary than a work by say, August Wilson

And for heaven’s sake, are we still calling TV the vast wasteland? Is Shirky really unable to justify his silly hypotheses without needing to remind us that some TV shows are ridiculous? Jeez, now that’s insight!

I’m sure Shirky means well, and is sincere, but sometimes a little common sense is more valuable than all the intellectual windstorms — and common sense says that individual creators, whether artists, thinkers, editors or journalists or whatever, have and will always have enormous value to society. And mob lynchings will never take the place of courtrooms, even if the lynchings are created, organized, recorded and shared on cel phones

Alas, after passively consuming your blog content these past 10 minutes, I now feel morally compelled to tweet and blog about it. Surplus indeed.

Ms Garber, you are now my official filter for all things Shirky. Oh the irony? ;-)