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

More quotes by Clay Shirky

Image
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.
Clay Shirky
Image
Algorithms don't do a good job of detecting their own flaws.
Clay Shirky
Image
When you got a cell phone you stopped making plans. 'I'll call you when I get there.'
Clay Shirky
Image
We're not good at thinking fast. We are good at feeling fast.
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
We use the word 'organization' to mean both the state of being organized and the groups that do the organizing.
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 is no news industry.
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
Tools get socially interesting after they're no longer technologically interesting.
Clay Shirky
Image
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
Clay Shirky
Image
Wikipedia [...] is the product not of collectivism but of unending argumentation.
Clay Shirky
Image
Anybody who predicts the death of cities has already met his spouse.
Clay Shirky
Image
When we change the way we communicate, we change society.
Clay Shirky
Image
Unlike sharing, where the group is mainly an aggregate of participants, cooperating creates group identity.
Clay Shirky
Image
We are moving from sharing to cooperation to collective action.
Clay Shirky
Image
Time Warner has called and they want us all back on the couch, just consuming - not producing, not sharing - and we should say, 'No.'
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
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