The Wardman Wire

Clay Shirky is one of the most perceptive commentators on the evolution, and impact, of the Internet.

Here he gives an interview to GRITtv’s Laura Flanders.

Karthika Muthukumaraswamy has some reflections on the interview, and Twitter, over at the Online Journalism Blog.

Clay Shirky talks about the power of digital networking, and how social media can do everything from cause revolutions to create whole new political parties when done right.

The simplicity of Twitter, of course, is its genius. It has the power to do so much by doing so little. But that’s not the only thing that’s simple about Twitter. The service itself was only intended to share 140-character messages with the world. Its significance is its evolution. Everything from @replying and retweeting to using hashes and symbols can be attributed to the users. It has brilliantly allowed users to define it – almost entirely. As Shirky points out, “Most of the uses of Twitter were not imagined by the designers of the service – they were managed by the users of the service.”