Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Clay Shirky
Age: 61
Born: 1964
Born: January 1
Academic
Scientist
Technology Evangelist
Writer
Columbia
Missouri
Burden
Bureaucracies
Kill
Suspend
Second
Thermodynamics
Easier
Temporarily
Create
Simpler
Law
Bureaucracy
Process
Complexes
Make
Complex
More quotes by Clay Shirky
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
Any system described by a power law [...] has several curious effects. The first is that, by definition, most participants are below average.
Clay Shirky
Upgrading one's imagination about what is possible is always a leap of faith.
Clay Shirky
There's no such thing as information overload-only filter failure.
Clay Shirky
The future presented by the internet is the mass amateurization of publishing and a switch from 'Why publish this?' to 'Why not?
Clay Shirky
When you adopt a tool you adopt the management philosophy embedded in that tool.
Clay Shirky
Algorithms don't do a good job of detecting their own flaws.
Clay Shirky
One of the best ways to know you're completely wrong, is to behave as if you're complete right.
Clay Shirky
We are in a world where most American citizens over the age of 12 share things with each other online.
Clay Shirky
Egalitarianism is possible only in small social systems. Once a medium gets past a certain size fame is a forced move.
Clay Shirky
Unlike sharing, where the group is mainly an aggregate of participants, cooperating creates group identity.
Clay Shirky
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
Anybody who predicts the death of cities has already met his spouse.
Clay Shirky
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
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
Our social tools are not an improvement to modern society, they are a challenge to it.
Clay Shirky
Trying to express implicit and fuzzy relationships in ways that are explicit and sharp doesn't clarify the meaning, it destroys it.
Clay Shirky
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
The loss of control you fear is already in the past.
Clay Shirky
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