Britannica: food for thought or linkbait?

I came across a post today that Clay Shirky did at Corante’s Many2Many blog, which I have skimmed but haven’t read in its entirety — in part because it is really long 🙂 It’s also rather dense and well thought-out, as much of Clay’s stuff is, and I want to go back and read it more closely when I get a chance. In a nutshell, he is responding to a post by Michael Gorman at the Encyclopedia Britannica blog, which I gather is hosting a sort of online salon of some kind devoted to exploring the idea of Web 2.0.

Gorman’s post is a relatively long treatise on the shortcomings of the Web 2.0 phenomenon, looking at how it cheapens social discourse and results in a “flight from expertise” (much like Andrew Keen’s “cult of the amateur” — and Keen also shows up in the Britannica salon, as does Nick Carr). I’m going to go back and read Gorman’s post as well in more depth, but if this kind of thing interests you at all, they’re probably both worth a read.

Update:

Free Range Librarian takes some well-deserved shots at Gorman here, and accuses Britannica of hyping up his criticisms in an attempt to boost traffic (people do that on the Web? surely not), and Seth Finkelstein agrees that it smells like high-brow linkbait.