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Wikipedia [...] is the product not of collectivism but of unending argumentation.

Clay Shirky

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Clay Shirky
Age: 61
Born: 1964
Born: January 1
Academic
Scientist
Technology Evangelist
Writer
Columbia
Missouri
Products
Argumentation
Collectivism
Unending
Product

More quotes by Clay Shirky

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Any system described by a power law [...] has several curious effects. The first is that, by definition, most participants are below average.
Clay Shirky
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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.
Clay Shirky
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We use the word 'organization' to mean both the state of being organized and the groups that do the organizing.
Clay Shirky
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The loss of control you fear is already in the past.
Clay Shirky
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We are in a world where most American citizens over the age of 12 share things with each other online.
Clay Shirky
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The historic role of the consumer has been nothing more than a giant maw at the end of the mass media's long conveyer belt, the all-absorbing Yin to the mass media's all-producing Yang....In the age of the internet, no one is a passive consumer anymore because everyone is a media outlet.
Clay Shirky
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One of the best ways to know you're completely wrong, is to behave as if you're complete right.
Clay Shirky
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Society doesn't need newspapers. What we need is journalism... When we shift our attention from ‘save newspapers’ to ‘save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work.
Clay Shirky
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If someone around you is multitasking, you pick up distraction like second-hand smoke.
Clay Shirky
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We're not good at thinking fast. We are good at feeling fast.
Clay Shirky
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The future presented by the internet is the mass amateurization of publishing and a switch from 'Why publish this?' to 'Why not?
Clay Shirky
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It used to be expensive to make things public and cheap to make them private. Now it's expensive to make things private and cheap to make them public.
Clay Shirky
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Trying to express implicit and fuzzy relationships in ways that are explicit and sharp doesn't clarify the meaning, it destroys it.
Clay Shirky
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[T]he ways in which the information we give off about our selves, in photos and e-mails and MySpace pages and all the rest of it, has dramatically increased our social visibility and made it easier for us to find each other but also to be scrutinized in public.
Clay Shirky
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There is no larger collective-action problem than the environment. The three biggest lies of the environmental movement is that every little bit helps, you can do your part, and together we can do it.
Clay Shirky
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Tools get socially interesting after they're no longer technologically interesting.
Clay Shirky
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The tools that a society uses to create and maintain itself are as central to human life as a hive is to bee life. Though the hive is not part of any individual bee, it is part of the colony, both shaped by and shaping the lives of its inhabitants.
Clay Shirky
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There is no news industry.
Clay Shirky
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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.
Clay Shirky
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Upgrading one's imagination about what is possible is always a leap of faith.
Clay Shirky