Book: A Futurist's Manifesto

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Now Is the Time for Experiments (Ian Barker, Symtext)

Ian Barker is the Founder of Symtext and a proud contributor to this book. You can follow him on Twitter @irbarker. Symtext’s Liquid Textbook platform is used by schools, educators, and publishers to provide educator-curated learning materials to students.

As a member of the educational technology community and as an entrepreneur, I view Clay Shirky’s 2009 blog post, “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable”, as required reading for those of us in the publishing industry. The post deals with the implosion of newspaper revenue and the utter lack of clarity on what is to become of newspapers both online and print, potential business models, even the future of journalism itself.

Shirky likens our age to that of Gutenberg, when the advent of the printing press sparked an overwhelming wave of societal change. That upheaval fundamentally undermined existing power structures and changed ways of thinking and behaving for people in the 1500s. Shirky effectively argues that—lucky us!—we are living through a time of equal transformation and uncertainty. He neatly captures the angst of an entire industry, offering scant solace:

“In Craigslist’s gradual shift from ‘interesting if minor’ to ‘essential and transformative,’ there is one possible answer to the question, ‘If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?’ The answer is: Nothing will work, but everything might. (Emphasis mine.) Now is the time for experiments, ...