JAKE CLELAND

[Publishing is] making something public. That’s not a job anymore. That’s a button. There’s a button that says “publish,” and when you press it, it’s done. In ye olden times of 1997, it was difficult and expensive to make things public, and it was easy and cheap to keep things private. Privacy was the default setting. We had a class of people called publishers because it took special professional skill to make words and images visible to the public. Now it doesn’t take professional skills. It doesn’t take any skills. It takes a Wordpress install.

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Clay Shirky (via austinkleon)

It may require nothing to publish but it still requires hella something to write. Let’s be real: what this kind of accessibility has done for writers is made finding the good ones and clinging to them like driftwood even more important, lest you’re overcome by the relentless tide of shit. Let’s talk about how that “class of people” (among others) were also the ones charged with prohibiting me from reading Mark’s wonderful music criticism, for example. Burn down the establishment and don’t shed a tear, etc.

(via markrichardson)