long tail

(Promoted from user blogs. -Patrick)

In a recent WSJ op-ed, author Michael J. Malone points out that America is continuing its tradition of pioneering new frontiers by becoming the world's first entrepreneurial society.  He isn't just talking about business, but an entrepreneurial and independent spirit that cuts across society, manifesting itself in working from home, home schooling, MySpace pages, Second Life avatars, and creating YouTube videos.  Americans are transitioning from seeing themselves as cogs in a post-WWII industrial machine to behaving as independent creators.

This no doubt is in part a function of what Clay Shirky calls "cognitive surplus", the intellectual free time that is no longer being wasted on passively watching TV and, less and less, sitting in a cubicle.  This has largely been discussed in the context of Obama's success in capturing that cognitive surplus in user-generated content, and the success of wiki sites.

Read on.