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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.

Clay Shirky

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Clay Shirky
Age: 61
Born: 1964
Born: January 1
Academic
Scientist
Technology Evangelist
Writer
Columbia
Missouri
Every
Helping
Helps
Action
Environmental
Three
Biggest
Part
Lies
Problem
Movement
Together
Environment
Collectives
Littles
Bits
Collective
Little
Lying
Larger

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The loss of control you fear is already in the past.
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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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We're not good at thinking fast. We are good at feeling fast.
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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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Behavior is motivation filtered through opportunity.
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A firm is successful when the costs of directing employee effort are lower than the potential gain from directing.
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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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Publishing isn't a job anymore. It's a button.
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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?'
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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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Anybody who predicts the death of cities has already met his spouse.
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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.
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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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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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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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Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.
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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.
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