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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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Clay Shirky
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: January 1
Academic
Scientist
Technology Evangelist
Writer
Columbia
Missouri
Make
Things
Cheap
Expensive
Private
Computer
Security
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More quotes by Clay Shirky
If someone around you is multitasking, you pick up distraction like second-hand smoke.
Clay Shirky
Egalitarianism is possible only in small social systems. Once a medium gets past a certain size fame is a forced move.
Clay Shirky
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
[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
We systematically overestimate the value of access to information and underestimate the value of access to each other.
Clay Shirky
One of the best ways to know you're completely wrong, is to behave as if you're complete right.
Clay Shirky
We're not good at thinking fast. We are good at feeling fast.
Clay Shirky
When you adopt a tool you adopt the management philosophy embedded in that tool.
Clay Shirky
When you got a cell phone you stopped making plans. 'I'll call you when I get there.'
Clay Shirky
Fame is simply an imbalance between inbound and outbound attention.
Clay Shirky
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
Any system described by a power law [...] has several curious effects. The first is that, by definition, most participants are below average.
Clay Shirky
There is no news industry.
Clay Shirky
A firm is successful when the costs of directing employee effort are lower than the potential gain from directing.
Clay Shirky
The change we are in the middle of isn't minor and it isn't optional.
Clay Shirky
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
Tools get socially interesting after they're no longer technologically interesting.
Clay Shirky
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
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.
Clay Shirky
Curation comes up when people realize that it isn’t just about information seeking, it’s also about synchronizing a community.
Clay Shirky