Are peer-reviewed journals past their prime?

About a year ago, Blogger and Berkman Center fellow Ethan Zuckerman was invited by the editors of a respected technology journal to write an essay about the One Laptop Per Child initiative, a hot topic again at this year's Davos meeting. Zuckerman went through several drafts with his editor at the journal. "But then the managing editor of the journal got hold of the piece," Zuckerman writes. And this is what happened:

I got a draft back that bore very little resemblance to what I'd written - it was filled with international development clichés ('In a world where half the world has never made a phonecall, does it make sense to give children a laptop?') and mean-spirited skepticism about the project ('if the laptops overheat, poor people can use them as pot warmers'.)"

Zuckerman rightly pulled this piece because it didn't reflect his views. But his experience raises an important point:

Even had I approved the last edit of the piece, it would have taken another couple of months to get through peer review and into print, possibly nine months from my first draft to publication. And this isn't even that bad - I have a book chapter waiting for publication which is now over a year old - when I wrote it, it had up-to-date statistics regarding developing world weblogs. By the time it's published, it will only be interesting as a historical document - not a single figure will be within an order of magnitude of accuracy."

In an age when everything from genetic science to foreign policy changes so quickly, can peer reviewed academic journals be relevant?