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

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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
Public
Used

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Knowledge, unlike information, is a human characteristic there can be information no one knows, but there can't be knowledge no one knows.
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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.
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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?
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If someone around you is multitasking, you pick up distraction like second-hand smoke.
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Society is not just the product of its individual members it is also the product of its constituent groups.
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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.
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Behavior is motivation filtered through opportunity.
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One of the best ways to know you're completely wrong, is to behave as if you're complete right.
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A firm is successful when the costs of directing employee effort are lower than the potential gain from directing.
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Anybody who predicts the death of cities has already met his spouse.
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Collaboration is not an absolute good.
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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.
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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.
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Egalitarianism is possible only in small social systems. Once a medium gets past a certain size fame is a forced move.
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When we change the way we communicate, we change society.
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Time Warner has called and they want us all back on the couch, just consuming - not producing, not sharing - and we should say, 'No.'
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Our social life is literally primal, in the sense that chimpanzees and gorillas, our closest relatives among the primates, are also social.
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Curation comes up when people realize that it isn’t just about information seeking, it’s also about synchronizing a community.
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We use the word 'organization' to mean both the state of being organized and the groups that do the organizing.
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Wikipedia [...] is the product not of collectivism but of unending argumentation.
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