Notes on Clay Shirky - institutions vs. collaboration

Building on discussions based on Lev Manovich's practice of everyday media life we can see that the digital world, in a perpetual state of revolution is naturally anti-strategic and lends itself in contrast to tactical thinking. The internet, therefore is pre-institutional on a scale never seen before. it is as though the potential for institutions to develop civilisation has reached its limit and now they have begun to hold back progress. Non-institutioned power and potential is now more easily accessed and harnessed (although it is worth noting that this pressure of competition from amateurs is causing professionals to develop faster). What is also important is social capital as opposed to technological. We now live in a world that is global, social, ubiquitous and cheap, as exemplified by services like facebook and twitter. This places different areas of the world on a more equal footing (eg Africa was first to harness the power of text message exit polls and then was copied by the infinitely more technologically developed US. It is the idea that is important rather than the technological capacity). Now we are on an equal enough technological footing for the importance of the nation state to start reducing.