Clay Shirky turned me on to “The Collapse of Complex Societies” by Joseph Tainter. I’ve been reading it for a number of weeks, whenever I feel in the mood to mentally tackle the subject matter.
In a nutshell, the book’s thesis is basically this: In order to solve problems, societies must add complexity. Complexity is a valid method for solving problems, but increasing complexity comes with increasing energy needs.
Once a society is no longer able to sustain the energy costs of its level of complexity (i.e. when it reaches the unsustainable …

While doing some random surfing this afternoon (I think I started on Slashdot with a story from The Endeavour, and from there, Clay Shirky – though it’s hard to retrace steps when moving around like that, surfing willy-nilly), I found this article.
It’s about newspapers transitioning into the digital age, but it fits the discussion we’ve been having from the last post. It’s definitely worth a read. What do you think?