With work events and the holidays and winter bugs, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted Friday Links. I’m going to remedy that right… now.

➻ The Economist had a fascinating article in December about how the Internet (and electric telegraph) might very well destroy the newspaper business in 2010 (and 1845). Their summation is, of course, correct:

The internet may kill newspapers; but it is not clear if that matters. For society, what matters is that people should have access to news, not that it should be delivered through any particular medium; and, for the consumer, the faster it travels, the better.

But the really entertaining aspect of the article is reading the hysteria over what would happen to newspapers upon the telegraph’s arrival.

➻ Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, contributed his thoughts to a great little project that asked “How Has The Internet Changed The Way You Think?” Other contributors include Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan, Kevin Kelly, author of New Rules for the New Economy and Whole Earth Discipline author Stewart Brand.

➻ Speaking of Kevin Kelly and Stewart Brand, Kevin write a great review of Brand’s book over on Cool Tools. (Incidentally, we’re big fans of viewing books as tools.)

➻ GalleyCat asked some really smart people about “Book Publishing 10 Years in the Future,” Seth Godin and Richard Nash among them. Nash delved into the matter further earlier this month at Publishing Perspectives.

➻ Cool Hunting takes a look at Debbie Millman’s Look Both Ways.

➻ David Holohan wrote a great review of Rah Pattel’s critique of modern capitalism, The Value of Nothing, in The Christian Science Monitor yesterday.

➻ The New York Times newly released book section includes I Am Ozzy by Ozzy Osbourne with Chris Ayres, and Ozzy’s warning:

Other people’s memories of the stuff in this book might not be the same as mine. I ain’t gonna argue with ’em. Over the past 40 years I’ve been loaded on booze, coke, acid, Quaaludes, glue, cough mixture, heroin, Rohypnol, Klonopin, Vicodin, and too many other heavy-duty substances to list in this footnote. On more than a few occasions I was on all of those at the same time.

Sounds like it may be entertaining, or a disaster… maybe both.

➻ Today is the the first Indie Press Friday over on Twitter.

➻ And, finally, we have a story Remembering Spike Jones and His City Slickers from NPR’s All Things Considered, aired late last month.