Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Clay Shirky
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: January 1
Academic
Scientist
Technology Evangelist
Writer
Columbia
Missouri
Things
Cheap
Expensive
Private
Computer
Security
Public
Used
Make

More quotes by Clay Shirky

Image
Curation comes up when people realize that it isn’t just about information seeking, it’s also about synchronizing a community.
Clay Shirky
Image
Unlike sharing, where the group is mainly an aggregate of participants, cooperating creates group identity.
Clay Shirky
Image
Upgrading one's imagination about what is possible is always a leap of faith.
Clay Shirky
Image
Any system described by a power law [...] has several curious effects. The first is that, by definition, most participants are below average.
Clay Shirky
Image
Anybody who predicts the death of cities has already met his spouse.
Clay Shirky
Image
When we change the way we communicate, we change society.
Clay Shirky
Image
If what you're doing is valuable for people, they will find a way to pay you to keep doing it.
Clay Shirky
Image
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
Image
It is possible to think that the Internet will be a net positive for society while admitting that there are significant downsides - after all, it's not a revolution if nobody loses.
Clay Shirky
Image
So forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this - the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast.
Clay Shirky
Image
A firm is successful when the costs of directing employee effort are lower than the potential gain from directing.
Clay Shirky
Image
Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.
Clay Shirky
Image
When you make the claim that something on the Internet is going to be good for democracy, you often [hear], 'Are you talking about the thing with the singing cats?'
Clay Shirky
Image
There's no such thing as information overload-only filter failure.
Clay Shirky
Image
We're not good at thinking fast. We are good at feeling fast.
Clay Shirky
Image
When you adopt a tool you adopt the management philosophy embedded in that tool.
Clay Shirky
Image
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
Image
Our social tools are not an improvement to modern society, they are a challenge to it.
Clay Shirky
Image
The more ideas there are in circulation, the more ideas there are for any individual to disagree with. More media always means more arguing.
Clay Shirky
Image
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