Clay Shirky, author of Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age in a recent Ted Talk.

Link to video for RSS readers.

On this blog I've often discussed generational cycles starting back in 2004 with this post. If you've read other posts sprinkled through the years, you know that as a culture and society we swing between two major perspectives which influence thought and behavior at an individual and societal level.  These two cycles, often illustrated by a pendulum, are the idealistic generation and the civic generation.  The last idealistic cycle ran from 1963 to 2003 at which time we tipped into a civic generational mindset.

In Clay Shirky's short TED Talk, he makes a lot of good points but perhaps even unwittingly reveals more evidence that the culture has indeed changed and we are well into the 40-year civic cycle of the generational pendulum.