Quote

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

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
Loses
Possible
Society
Admitting
Think
Significant
Thinking
Revolution
Positive
Internet
Nobody

More quotes by 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 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
If someone around you is multitasking, you pick up distraction like second-hand smoke.
Clay Shirky
Image
Our social tools are not an improvement to modern society, they are a challenge to it.
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
Tools get socially interesting after they're no longer technologically interesting.
Clay Shirky
Image
We systematically overestimate the value of access to information and underestimate the value of access to each other.
Clay Shirky
Image
When you adopt a tool you adopt the management philosophy embedded in that tool.
Clay Shirky
Image
Behavior is motivation filtered through opportunity.
Clay Shirky
Image
Egalitarianism is possible only in small social systems. Once a medium gets past a certain size fame is a forced move.
Clay Shirky
Image
Anybody who predicts the death of cities has already met his spouse.
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
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
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
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
Trying to express implicit and fuzzy relationships in ways that are explicit and sharp doesn't clarify the meaning, it destroys it.
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 we change the way we communicate, we change society.
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