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

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
Good
Democracy
Hear
Talking
Cats
Often
Claim
Thing
Cat
Going
Claims
Something
Singing
Make
Internet

More quotes by Clay Shirky

Image
The whole, 'Is the internet a good thing or a bad thing'? We're done with that. It's just a thing. How to maximise its civic value, its public good - that's the really big challenge.
Clay Shirky
Image
Time Warner has called and they want us all back on the couch, just consuming - not producing, not sharing - and we should say, 'No.'
Clay Shirky
Image
Knowledge, unlike information, is a human characteristic there can be information no one knows, but there can't be knowledge no one knows.
Clay Shirky
Image
Publishing isn't a job anymore. It's a button.
Clay Shirky
Image
Bureaucracies temporarily suspend the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In a bureaucracy, it's easier to make a process more complex than to make it simpler, and easier to create a new burden than kill an old one.
Clay Shirky
Image
We are moving from sharing to cooperation to collective action.
Clay Shirky
Image
Collaboration is not an absolute good.
Clay Shirky
Image
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
Image
Tools get socially interesting after they're no longer technologically interesting.
Clay Shirky
Image
Upgrading one's imagination about what is possible is always a leap of faith.
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
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
Image
We are in a world where most American citizens over the age of 12 share things with each other online.
Clay Shirky
Image
When you adopt a tool you adopt the management philosophy embedded in that tool.
Clay Shirky
Image
When you got a cell phone you stopped making plans. 'I'll call you when I get there.'
Clay Shirky
Image
We use the word 'organization' to mean both the state of being organized and the groups that do the organizing.
Clay Shirky
Image
The loss of control you fear is already in the past.
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
If someone around you is multitasking, you pick up distraction like second-hand smoke.
Clay Shirky
Image
Our social life is literally primal, in the sense that chimpanzees and gorillas, our closest relatives among the primates, are also social.
Clay Shirky