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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.
Clay Shirky
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Clay Shirky
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: January 1
Academic
Scientist
Technology Evangelist
Writer
Columbia
Missouri
Effects
System
Participants
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Power
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Definitions
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Several
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Average
More quotes by Clay Shirky
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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Behavior is motivation filtered through opportunity.
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If what you're doing is valuable for people, they will find a way to pay you to keep doing it.
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If someone around you is multitasking, you pick up distraction like second-hand smoke.
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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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We use the word 'organization' to mean both the state of being organized and the groups that do the organizing.
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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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The more ideas there are in circulation, the more ideas there are for any individual to disagree with. More media always means more arguing.
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Unlike sharing, where the group is mainly an aggregate of participants, cooperating creates group identity.
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Our social tools are not an improvement to modern society, they are a challenge to it.
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We're not good at thinking fast. We are good at feeling fast.
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There's no such thing as information overload-only filter failure.
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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?'
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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.
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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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Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.
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Algorithms don't do a good job of detecting their own flaws.
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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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[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.
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We are moving from sharing to cooperation to collective action.
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