Just finished reading the 19th century fable Flatland and it provides a wonderful metaphor for the changes in academia and academic publishing brought on by Web 2.0. Mr Square walks around in two dimensions and when he meets three-dimensional Mr Sphere he is utterly perplexed by how he can distort his size and appear and vanish through the plane of Flatland. Square simply can't understand altitude or the boundless spaces of volume. 

Similarily academics must decide if they are squares or spheres when it comes to the wonderous interactive, participatory and conversational spaces that blogs, wikis and other online spaces provide for dissemination and analysis of ideas. Media is changing and the economies of scale must compete with the economies of small. Unlike the threat that Walmart or massive banks pose to small cornerstores or co-ops, the dots and nodes of networked communication are threatening the stranglehold of mass media and publishing. Perhaps the next superpower will not be a nation state or collection of nations but instead swarm systems of collective intelligence as millions or even billions of smalls occupy the space, the volume.  Academics can choose to play a crucial spherical role by leaping from the plane and embracing a dimensional shift in how we organise, share and communicate ideas.