Clay Shirky on the Internet

"This shock of inclusion, where professional media gives way to participation by two billion amateurs (a threshold we will cross this year) means that average quality of public thought has collapsed; when anyone can say anything any time, how could it not? If all that happens from this influx of amateurs is the destruction of existing models for producing high-quality material, we would be at the beginning of another Dark Ages.
So it falls to us to make sure that isn't all that happens."

Read the rest of researcher Clay Shirky's take on what the internet is doing to society here:

http://www.edge.org/q2010/q10_1.html#shirky

(The page on the "Edge" site that this is on contains a LOT of thought-provoking reading.)