The Coming Age of Universal Authorship

How will universal authorship shape future society? Seed Magazine has published an article that poses just that question, examining the growing numbers of “publishers” across all medium.

They explain:

Nearly everyone reads. Soon, nearly everyone will publish. Before 1455, books were handwritten, and it took a scribe a year to produce a Bible. Today, it takes only a minute to send a tweet or update a blog. Rates of authorship are increasing by historic orders of magnitude. Nearly universal authorship, like universal literacy before it, stands to reshape society by hastening the flow of information and making individuals more influential.

Counting Facebook, Twitter, blogs and the like, SEED predicts that by 2013 everyone on the planet will be publishing in some form – their definition of publishing means 100 people or more read it. While the implications are not crystal clear, they see privacy eroding, but out of that a social conscience is emerging:

In July, Dawn Staley, University of Southern California’s women’s basketball coach, complained on Twitter of rude service at her favorite pizza spot; the employee responsible was fired the next day. The judgment of the vice-chancellor of Buckingham University was widely questioned after he claimed that “curvy” female students are a “perk” of his job. For better or worse, as more people make public comments, we all share more thoughts and are more subject to public opinion.

SEED: “A Writing Revolution”

[image by Markus Rödder]