In Chapter 2 of Clay Shirky's book, "Here Comes Everybody," he makes an observation that the mass photosharing of Flickr would not have been possible if someone had tried to coordinate. He says there is a "distinction between Flickr coordinating users versus helping them coordinate themselves" (33).
Is this referring to a future without the middle man? We are already seeing a shift from the previously private and specialized industry of publishing to becoming something that anyone can do. For example, once I finish typing up this post, I'm going to click a button that says "publish post." In essence, I'm publishing something for the rest of the world that didn't first have to go through copyediting, permissions, etc.
So is this a good thing or a bad thing? We can now all be publishers, but what is going to happen to the publishing industry? Shirky makes another salient point that we experienced this similar chaos and confusion with the emergence of the printing press. Suddenly scribes were put out of the job. A market that had been available to only a select few had suddenly become publicly available to almost everyone. I would say that things have worked out since then, so do you think we are doomed with a mush of unedited, unworthy works or is this a step toward a more knowledgeable world? Are we in the middle of a revolution that will settle down as we learn to adapt?
The publishing industry may or may not entirely disappear. If it does, it will likely be in the far future, because there still seems to be quite a demand, and things that are so established tend to die out slowly, if at all. If professional publishing does die out, it will probably not be within our lifetime. People continue to go to professional publishers because, well, they do it better. Because they are professionals.
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