Quote

Algorithms don't do a good job of detecting their own flaws.

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
Detecting
Algorithms
Flaws
Jobs
Good

More quotes by 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 are moving from sharing to cooperation to collective action.
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
The loss of control you fear is already in the past.
Clay Shirky
Image
Multi-taskers often think they are like gym rats, bulking up their ability to juggle tasks, when in fact they are like alcoholics, degrading their abilities through over-consumption.
Clay Shirky
Image
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
Image
Tools get socially interesting after they're no longer technologically interesting.
Clay Shirky
Image
Any system described by a power law [...] has several curious effects. The first is that, by definition, most participants are below average.
Clay Shirky
Image
There is no news industry.
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
Image
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
Image
Our social tools are not an improvement to modern society, they are a challenge to it.
Clay Shirky
Image
Anybody who predicts the death of cities has already met his spouse.
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
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.
Clay Shirky
Image
When you got a cell phone you stopped making plans. 'I'll call you when I get there.'
Clay Shirky
Image
One of the best ways to know you're completely wrong, is to behave as if you're complete right.
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