Quote

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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Clay Shirky
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: January 1
Academic
Scientist
Technology Evangelist
Writer
Columbia
Missouri
Technology
Consumers
Belts
Age
Marketing
Outlets
Everyone
Anymore
Consumer
Culture
Role
Historic
Ends
Mass
Giant
Yang
Nothing
Internet
Producing
Outlet
Long
Roles
Passive
Belt
Media
Giants
Absorbing

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When you got a cell phone you stopped making plans. 'I'll call you when I get there.'
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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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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.
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We're not good at thinking fast. We are good at feeling fast.
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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.
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Amateur production, the result of all this new capability, means that the category of ‘consumer’ is now a temporary behavior rather than a permanent identity
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Anybody who predicts the death of cities has already met his spouse.
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The loss of control you fear is already in the past.
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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.
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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.
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The change we are in the middle of isn't minor and it isn't optional.
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