Clay Shirky: 2009 is going to be a bloodbath. The great misfortune of newspapers in this era is that they were such a good idea for such a long time that people felt the newspaper business model was part of a deep truth about the world, rather than just the way things happened to be. The 500-year-old accident of economics occasioned by the printing press is over. The job of the next decade is mostly going to be taking the raw revolutionary capability that's now apparent and really seeing what we can do with it.
See also: The trick is to make people think that a certain paradigm is inevitable, and they had better give in.
And this: Any technology that is going to have significant impact over the next 10 years is already at least 10 years old.
From a year ago: Every now and then I meet someone in Manhattan who has never driven a car. Some confess it sheepishly, and some announce it proudly. For some it is just a practical matter of fact, the equivalent of not keeping a horse on West 87th Street or Avenue A. Still, I used to wonder at such people, but more and more I wonder at myself.
From the archive: Gibson shows us a country that has drifted dangerously from its governing principles, evoking a kind of ironic nostalgia for a time when, as one character puts it, "grown-ups still ran things."
From nearly two (or three) years ago: Time Trumpet was a six-episode television comedy series which aired on BBC Two during Summer 2006. The satirical series "looked back" on events of the first 30 years of the 21st century from the perspective of a nostalgia show in the year 2031 ...
The shape of things to come | 
