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Trying to express implicit and fuzzy relationships in ways that are explicit and sharp doesn't clarify the meaning, it destroys it.

Clay Shirky

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Clay Shirky
Age: 61
Born: 1964
Born: January 1
Academic
Scientist
Technology Evangelist
Writer
Columbia
Missouri
Trying
Destroys
Way
Sharp
Programming
Express
Relationships
Clarify
Meaning
Fuzzy
Ways
Implicit
Doesn
Explicit

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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 change we are in the middle of isn't minor and it isn't optional.
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Upgrading one's imagination about what is possible is always a leap of faith.
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We are in a world where most American citizens over the age of 12 share things with each other online.
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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.
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Amateur production, the result of all this new capability, means that the category of ‘consumer’ is now a temporary behavior rather than a permanent identity
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Our social life is literally primal, in the sense that chimpanzees and gorillas, our closest relatives among the primates, are also social.
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When you got a cell phone you stopped making plans. 'I'll call you when I get there.'
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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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If someone around you is multitasking, you pick up distraction like second-hand smoke.
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When you adopt a tool you adopt the management philosophy embedded in that tool.
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There's no such thing as information overload-only filter failure.
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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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Anybody who predicts the death of cities has already met his spouse.
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There is no news industry.
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Publishing isn't a job anymore. It's a button.
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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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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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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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