Clay Weighs In On The Age Question

This conversation has legs (it even made the NY Times yesterday) and the latest post weighing in on it comes from Clay Shirky.

Clay says my first post was correct and my hedge in the second post was a "kind lie".

This is a classic Clay Shirky post, full of academic explanations combined with real world examples. But I still don’t totally buy the argument that age/experience is a disadvantage for startups at the cusp of new technology.

I grew up getting my entertainment from the TV and my music from a turntable. And yet I’ve adopted the web as a native user and I think my instincts about where video and audio on the web are headed have been pretty accurate.

I don’t think it’s totally about age, it’s about a mindset. If you are willing to throw out old habits and start anew, you can compete with anyone. But Clay is right that you have to unlearn a lot of things in order to do that.