Quote

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.

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
Together
Environment
Collectives
Littles
Bits
Collective
Little
Lying
Larger
Every
Helping
Helps
Action
Environmental
Three
Biggest
Part
Lies
Problem
Movement

More quotes by 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
Our social tools are not an improvement to modern society, they are a challenge to it.
Clay Shirky
Image
We use the word 'organization' to mean both the state of being organized and the groups that do the organizing.
Clay Shirky
Image
If what you're doing is valuable for people, they will find a way to pay you to keep doing it.
Clay Shirky
Image
Unlike sharing, where the group is mainly an aggregate of participants, cooperating creates group identity.
Clay Shirky
Image
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.
Clay Shirky
Image
If someone around you is multitasking, you pick up distraction like second-hand smoke.
Clay Shirky
Image
A Wikipedia article is a process, not a product.
Clay Shirky
Image
The loss of control you fear is already in the past.
Clay Shirky
Image
So forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this - the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast.
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
Behavior is motivation filtered through opportunity.
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
Image
Fame is simply an imbalance between inbound and outbound attention.
Clay Shirky
Image
We are moving from sharing to cooperation to collective action.
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
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.
Clay Shirky
Image
There's no such thing as information overload-only filter failure.
Clay Shirky
Image
Algorithms don't do a good job of detecting their own flaws.
Clay Shirky
Image
It used to be expensive to make things public and cheap to make them private. Now it's expensive to make things private and cheap to make them public.
Clay Shirky