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

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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.
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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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When you adopt a tool you adopt the management philosophy embedded in that tool.
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The loss of control you fear is already in the past.
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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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We are moving from sharing to cooperation to collective action.
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The change we are in the middle of isn't minor and it isn't optional.
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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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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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Society is not just the product of its individual members it is also the product of its constituent groups.
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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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Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.
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Curation comes up when people realize that it isn’t just about information seeking, it’s also about synchronizing a community.
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Anybody who predicts the death of cities has already met his spouse.
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We systematically overestimate the value of access to information and underestimate the value of access to each other.
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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.
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Egalitarianism is possible only in small social systems. Once a medium gets past a certain size fame is a forced move.
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When we change the way we communicate, we change society.
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