I haven't yet ready Clay Shirky's new book Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age, nor had I planned to; but now I think I'd better do so. The reason is an awesomely bad review of the book by Jonathan Last in the Weekly Standard, laced with – well, disdain – for Mr Shirky and his works. The reviewer writes, for example:

“Shirky’s epigrams are meant simultaneously to dazzle and soothe. To
witness a Shirkyism (“The Internet is the first public medium to have
post-Gutenberg economics” or “Institutions will try to preserve the
problem to which they are the solution”) is to be confronted with
insights that sound elegantly clever, yet never quite make sense. …..
Yet it’s not quite fair to hold Shirkyisms to any standard of
coherence. Because Clay Shirky isn’t an academic or a public
intellectual. He’s a guru.”

And there are pages of it. It takes courage to publish a terrible review so I found this rather tantalising. I enjoyed Mr Shirky's previous bestseller Here Comes Everybody but the plentiful extracts from the new book suggested there wasn't all that much new – it's basically the same theme, and he's a populariser – indeed, a guru – rather than an original thinker so it would be too much to hope for a lot of extra insight. What's more, when it comes to the impact of social networks, I don't think much underlying serious thought and empirical study has taken place yet to be popularised (although Malcolm Gladwell's interesting recent New Yorker essay is a good start).

But is Cognitive Surplus as bad as Mr Last says? I'd like to hear other views – other reviews have been lukewarm too –  but think I will have to find out for myself.