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The change we are in the middle of isn't minor and it isn't optional.

Clay Shirky

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Clay Shirky
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: January 1
Academic
Scientist
Technology Evangelist
Writer
Columbia
Missouri
Minors
Middle
Change
Optional
Minor

More quotes by Clay Shirky

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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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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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Algorithms don't do a good job of detecting their own flaws.
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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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The tools that a society uses to create and maintain itself are as central to human life as a hive is to bee life. Though the hive is not part of any individual bee, it is part of the colony, both shaped by and shaping the lives of its inhabitants.
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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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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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Tools get socially interesting after they're no longer technologically interesting.
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Publishing isn't a job anymore. It's a button.
Clay Shirky
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Wikipedia [...] is the product not of collectivism but of unending argumentation.
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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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Upgrading one's imagination about what is possible is always a leap of faith.
Clay Shirky
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We are in a world where most American citizens over the age of 12 share things with each other online.
Clay Shirky
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There is no news industry.
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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.
Clay Shirky
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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.
Clay Shirky
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When you got a cell phone you stopped making plans. 'I'll call you when I get there.'
Clay Shirky
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Unlike sharing, where the group is mainly an aggregate of participants, cooperating creates group identity.
Clay Shirky
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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
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A firm is successful when the costs of directing employee effort are lower than the potential gain from directing.
Clay Shirky