Quote

Any system described by a power law [...] has several curious effects. The first is that, by definition, most participants are below average.

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
Law
Described
Power
Definition
Firsts
Definitions
First
Several
Curious
Average
Effects
System
Participants

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
Tools get socially interesting after they're no longer technologically interesting.
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
We systematically overestimate the value of access to information and underestimate the value of access to each other.
Clay Shirky
Image
The change we are in the middle of isn't minor and it isn't optional.
Clay Shirky
Image
Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.
Clay Shirky
Image
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
Image
Society is not just the product of its individual members it is also the product of its constituent groups.
Clay Shirky
Image
A firm is successful when the costs of directing employee effort are lower than the potential gain from directing.
Clay Shirky
Image
One of the best ways to know you're completely wrong, is to behave as if you're complete right.
Clay Shirky
Image
Collaboration is not an absolute good.
Clay Shirky
Image
[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.
Clay Shirky
Image
Egalitarianism is possible only in small social systems. Once a medium gets past a certain size fame is a forced move.
Clay Shirky
Image
Anybody who predicts the death of cities has already met his spouse.
Clay Shirky
Image
We're not good at thinking fast. We are good at feeling fast.
Clay Shirky
Image
There is no news industry.
Clay Shirky
Image
Behavior is motivation filtered through opportunity.
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
Image
There's no such thing as information overload-only filter failure.
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