Quote

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

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Clay Shirky
Age: 61
Born: 1964
Born: January 1
Academic
Scientist
Technology Evangelist
Writer
Columbia
Missouri
Talking
Cats
Often
Claim
Thing
Cat
Going
Claims
Something
Singing
Make
Internet
Good
Democracy
Hear

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Publishing isn't a job anymore. It's a button.
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We are moving from sharing to cooperation to collective action.
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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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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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We are in a world where most American citizens over the age of 12 share things with each other online.
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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 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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Upgrading one's imagination about what is possible is always a leap of faith.
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When we change the way we communicate, we change society.
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If someone around you is multitasking, you pick up distraction like second-hand smoke.
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Fame is simply an imbalance between inbound and outbound attention.
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When you adopt a tool you adopt the management philosophy embedded in that tool.
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Wikipedia [...] is the product not of collectivism but of unending argumentation.
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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.
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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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A Wikipedia article is a process, not a product.
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Unlike sharing, where the group is mainly an aggregate of participants, cooperating creates group identity.
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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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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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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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