http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf
Clay Shirky has put together an excellent presentation about the way that our media has become the opposite of hierarchy – cholarchy or heterarchy. Or what I have defined as “mass conversation“. And it occurred to me that five years ago I got all my information from either conversation or mass communication. But now it nearly all comes from mass conversation. Blogrolls, RSS feeds, forums and such. Especially for work.

Strange how only a few years can change so much about how you interact with the world. I thought it was especially interesting in Shirky’s talk about how China has changed its interaction. During the Sichuan earthquake last year, there was a massive explosion of this mass conversation. It was nearly uncontrollable until the government had to clamp down because of so many images, stories, videos blaming corrupt officials for the collapse of the schools. Whereas during the last major earthquake, the government refused to admit that one had occurred for nearly three months!