NYU communications scholar Clay Shirky, in an essay for the Wall Street Journal, notes that every new form of communication has brought on predictions of a societal dumbing-down. The Internet is no different.

Yes, he says, there is much mediocrity because most publicly available media now is produced by those with little or no understanding of professional standards of journalism, writing or filmmaking. But there are also so much great content in the pipeline because of the arrival of the Internet; on balance, there is no doubt about its advancement of society.

"This issue isn't whether there's lots of dumb stuff online—there is, just as there is lots of dumb stuff in bookstores. The issue is whether there are any ideas so good today that they will survive into the future," he writes. Open-source software seems to be such an idea, he suggests.

"There is no easy way to get through a media revolution of this magnitude; the task before us now is to experiment with new ways of using a medium that is social, ubiquitous and cheap, a medium that changes the landscape by distributing freedom of the press and freedom of assembly as widely as freedom of speech."

Communications scholar Clay Shirky notes that the most-viewed video of the last five years is a child biting his brother's finger twice. It was done with a relatively cheap camera, no money changed hands, and no one seems to have made a fortune from it.

It is, in short, an example of how the world has changed. Cheap bits now compete with expensive bits and often put expensive bits at relative disadvantage.

Problem is, the complex business of media often can't convert itself to the simple business of media. It, and other systems and businesses, frequently have to collapse before they pick up the new traits.

"A world where that is the kind of thing that just happens from time to time is a world where complexity is neither an absolute requirement nor an automatic advantage," Shirky writes.

He says the old system is broken. It needs to understand something it cannot actually do. It is bureaucratized, laden with complexities, and just cannot compete.

"But there is one compensating advantage for the people who escape the old system: when the ecosystem stops rewarding complexity, it is the people who figure out how to work simply in the present, rather than the people who mastered the complexities of the past, who get to say what happens in the future," he concludes.