Here is Clay Shirky’s talk at Web 2.0 (Apr 23, 2008), called Gin, Television, and Social Surplus.

My favorite bit: “The way you explore complex ecosystems is you just try lots and lots and lots of things, and you hope that everybody who fails fails informatively so that you can at least find a skull on a pikestaff near where you’re going. That’s the phase we’re in now.”

Read it.  Seriously.