Clay Shirky
Clay Shirky
Clay Shirkyis an American writer, consultant and teacher on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
wish tools groups
To have a discussion about the plusses and minuses of various forms of group action, though, is going to require discussing the current tools and services as they exist, rather than discussing their caricatures or simply wishing that they would disappear.
cells phones cell-phone
When you got a cell phone you stopped making plans. 'I'll call you when I get there.'
news industry
There is no news industry.
interesting tools
Tools get socially interesting after they're no longer technologically interesting.
moving past egalitarianism
Egalitarianism is possible only in small social systems. Once a medium gets past a certain size fame is a forced move.
promise tools needs
What you need for a participatory system to work: "a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain."
thinking gym-rats facts
Multi-taskers often think they are like gym rats, bulking up their ability to juggle tasks, when in fact they are like alcoholics, degrading their abilities through over-consumption.
challenges done internet
The whole, 'Is the Internet a good thing or a bad thing'? We're done with that. It's just a thing. How to maximise its civic value, its public good - that's the really big challenge.
gorillas life-is social
Our social life is literally primal, in the sense that chimpanzees and gorillas, our closest relatives among the primates, are also social.
thinking years interesting
More interesting than thinking about whats possible in 10 years is thinking whats possible now but that no one has built.
causes social cause-and-effect
Human beings are social creatures - not occasionally or by accident but always. Sociability is one of our lives as both cause and effect.
thinking important world
Think about spam filters; if email didnt come from someone that someone you know knows, thats an important signal, and one we could embed in the environment; we just dont. I just want the world to be filtered through my social graph.
law burden process
Bureaucracies temporarily suspend the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In a bureaucracy, it's easier to make a process more complex than to make it simpler, and easier to create a new burden than kill an old one.
successful effort gains
A firm is successful when the costs of directing employee effort are lower than the potential gain from directing.