The Stack: Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky

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Shirky acknowledges that a lot of people distract themselves with silly cat-photo sites—ICanHasCheezburger.com and the like—but he suggests misleadingly that that's as low as the online world goes. He also gives short shrift to the Internet as mundane convenience. For a lot of us, the ease of ordering books or Chinese food online plays just as large a role in the digital revolution as making charitable contributions by click rather than snail mail.

Shirky commits other distortions, too. Television, in his rendering, is all Gilligan's Island and The Partridge Family. Agreed: Most TV programs are a waste of time, and the world might be a better place if more people eschewed Jersey Shore for Grobanites for Charity. Still, some of us occasionally want to escape into a good story or spend time in the company of a diverting ensemble of neurotics. What's wrong with that? So far, the Internet doesn't generate much original entertainment of any heft—at least none that Shirky notes. He ought to check out The Daily Show, American Masters, Curb Your Enthusiasm, or 30 Rock. He might even benefit from a hearty laugh or two. Same story on public affairs: There is nothing online to rival 60 Minutes or many of the documentaries on HBO (TWX). In fact, we might be better off as a society if more people watched these programs.

Like many of the high-tech faithful, Shirky displays a casual disdain for print. Publishing, he notes, was once something only publishers could do. "Publishing had to be taken seriously when its cost and effort made people take it seriously," he writes. "An activity that once seemed inherently valuable turned out to be only accidentally valuable."

This short review isn't the place for a full-dress defense of newspapers, magazines, and books. Suffice it to say, there are still many millions of readers who derive value from those products, even if the profit-and-loss formulas are shifting. Shirky doesn't explain how the do-it-yourself chaos of the Internet will produce a melancholy Richard Ford novel or Michael Lewis' next dissection of American business—or, for that matter, Clay Shirky's next book-length sermon on the Internet.

Barrett is an assistant managing editor at Bloomberg Businessweek.

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