The Internet Will Benefit Society

Those who worry that the Internet promotes mediocrity should consider the printing press, says Clay Shirky: pulp writing accompanied peer reviewed science and booming literacy rates. “Literate societies become literate by investing extraordinary resources, every year, training children to read. Now it’s our turn to figure out what response we need to shape our use of digital tools,” says Shirky, the painter turned tech guru. “The case for digitally-driven stupidity assumes we’ll fail to integrate digital freedoms into society as well as we integrated literacy.”