But it also doles out praise to its subjects, particularly Clay Shirky and Jay Rosen.

FORBES: Dangers Lurking for the Future of News

As my friend Clay Shirky says, in a revolution, the old order gets destroyed long before the new order emerges.

FORBES: The Biggest Story Of Our Lives: Economic Revolution

Perhaps the most articulate definition is offered by Clay Shirky, a venture capitalist and leading light in the peer-to-peer community.

ECONOMIST: REPORT: COMPUTER NETWORKS

And, closing the conference, theorist and teacher Clay Shirky pointed to the promise of open-source approaches to social and political issues.

CNN: What if you could make anything you wanted?

Inspired by Michael Pollan and Clay Shirky, the project started with an open source prototype farm that was shared online.

FORBES: Windowfarms R&D-I-Y: Lessons for Crowdsourcing Innovation & Incentivizing Engagement

Stand Up To Cancer embodies collaborative orchestration advocated by writers such as Clay Shirky, Ori Brafman and Don Tapscott.

FORBES: The Collaborative Genius Behind Stand Up To Cancer

Clay Shirky, a new-media expert at New York University, suggests that content produced cheaply by freelancers could serve to fund more ambitious projects.

ECONOMIST: Can technology help make online content pay?

Clay Shirky is one of my intellectual heroes (see my 2008 interview with him), so I read his latest post on the future of reporting with interest.

FORBES: A Crisis in Reporting?

Early June will see the publication of Nicholas Carr's The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, and Clay Shirky's Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age.

FORBES: Commentary