Recent Ted Talk from Clay Shirky presenTed at the Ted@State conference. Description from the site:\n\nWhile news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics.
The material in this talk is the basis for his later writing in the book Here Comes Everybody. | "In this prescient 2005 talk, Clay Shirky shows how closed groups and companies will give way to looser networks where small contributors have big roles and fluid cooperation replaces rigid planning."
Shirky speaks at Google on his book, Cognitive Surplus, and answers some interesting questions after the talk. It is mostly the same material as the TED talk, but more of it, with more details and examples and diagrams.