Clay Shirky
- Gin, Television, and Social Surplus- By Clay Shirky on April 26, 2008 10:48 AM (This is a lightly edited transcription of a speech I gave at the Web 2.0 conference, April 23, 2008.) I was recently reminded of some reading I did in college, way back in the last century, by a British historian arguing that the critical technology, for the early phase of the industrial revolution, was gin.