Top 100 Clay Shirky Quotes

#1. The change we are in the middle of isn't minor and it isn't optional.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #33009
#2. If what you're doing is valuable for people, they will find a way to pay you to keep doing it.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #55148
#3. Tools that provide simple ways of creating groups lead to new groups, [ ... ] and not just more groups but more kinds of groups.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #72469
#4. The Facebook of China, however, is Renren, launched in 2005. (The Google of China is Baidu, and the Twitter of China is Sina Weibo.)

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #109565
#5. If it's a revolution it can't be predictable. And if it's predictable it can't be a revolution.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #112907
#6. A Wikipedia article is a process, not a product.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #139156
#7. Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #165369
#8. Upgrading one's imagination about what is possible is always a leap of faith.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #204196
#9. An organization will tend to grow only when the advantages that can be gotten from directing the work of additional employees are less than the transaction costs of managing them.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #212314
#10. When you got a cell phone you stopped making plans. 'I'll call you when I get there.'

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #244835
#11. We're not good at thinking fast. We are good at feeling fast.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #256971
#12. Digital networks are increasing the fluidity of all media. The old choice between one-way public media (like books and movies) and two-way private media (like the phone) has now expanded to include a third option: two-way media that operates on a scale from private to public.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #267798
#13. Information sharing produces shared awareness among the participants, and collaborative production relies on shared creation, but collective action creates shared responsibility, by tying the user's identity to the identity of the group.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #274481
#14. There are three things you need to be a good writer: you need to read a lot, you need to write a lot, and you need a lot of feedback.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #303442
#15. [R]elying on nonfinancial motivations may actually make systems more tolerant of variable participation.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #314935
#16. Facebook is not very good at dealing with named groups; they're not very good at saying, 'We've got this book club and I'm a member and you're not.' But membership is one of the precursors to a lot of social action.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #315462
#17. We're collectively living through 1500, when it's easier to see what's broken than what will replace it.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #345481
#18. 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

Clay Shirky Quotes #354926
#19. It is the people who figure out how to work simply in the present, rather than the people who mastered the complexities of the past, who get to say what happens in the future.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #360179
#20. Any system described by a power law [ ... ] has several curious effects. The first is that, by definition, most participants are below average.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #378643
#21. Anybody who predicts the death of cities has already met his spouse.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #412962
#22. Public and civic value require commitment and hard work among the core group of participants. It also requires that these groups be self-governing and submit to constraints that help them ignore distracting and entertaining material and stay focused instead of some sophisticated task.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #419449
#23. The only test any book should ever have to pass is whether the reader likes it

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #429037
#24. 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?'

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #446181
#25. If someone around you is multitasking, you pick up distraction like second-hand smoke.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #520625
#26. Growing up with a name that rhymes with turkey - and jerky - was no great fun. But, as an adult, I tell you, being globally unique in the age of Google can be extremely helpful.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #551865
#27. More interesting than thinking about what's possible in 10 years is thinking what's possible now but that no one has built.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #571417
#28. The basic capabilities of tools like Flickr reverse the old order of group activity, transforming 'gather, then share' into 'share, then gather'.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #571462
#29. 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

Clay Shirky Quotes #581358
#30. [T]he ways in which the information we give off about our selves, in photos and e-mails and MySpace pages and all the rest of it, has dramatically increased our social visibility and made it easier for us to find each other but also to be scrutinized in public.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #598469
#31. In a profession, members are only partly guided by service to the public.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #631062
#32. We are moving from sharing to cooperation to collective action.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #641408
#33. 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

Clay Shirky Quotes #655712
#34. 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

Clay Shirky Quotes #677918
#35. The transfer of [ ... ] capabilities from various professional classes to the general public is epochal.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #678754
#36. We are in a world where most American citizens over the age of 12 share things with each other online.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #685434
#37. How we put our collective talents to work is a social issue, not solely a personal one.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #691302
#38. How we treat one another matters, and not just in a "it's nice to be nice" kind of way: our behavior contributes to an environment that encourages some opportunities and hinders others.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #703525
#39. Communications tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #727670
#40. Tools get socially interesting after they're no longer technologically interesting.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #739715
#41. Society is not just the product of its individual members; it is also the product of its constituent groups.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #747094
#42. Trying to express implicit and fuzzy relationships in ways that are explicit and sharp doesn't clarify the meaning, it destroys it.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #763668
#43. The waterfall method amounts to a pledge by all parties not to learn anything while doing the actual work.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #770738
#44. 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

Clay Shirky Quotes #787399
#45. The threat [of the U.S. bills SOPA and PIPA] is the inversion of the burden of proof, where we suddenly are all treated like thieves at every moment we're given the freedom to create, to produce or to share.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #792498
#46. When we change the way we communicate, we change society

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #807857
#47. The Only Group That Can Categorize Everything Is Everybody

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Clay Shirky Quotes #824185
#48. Collaboration is not an absolute good.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #824516
#49. 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

Clay Shirky Quotes #825613
#50. The Shirky Principle declares that complex solutions, like a company, or an industry, can become so dedicated to the problem they are the solution to, that often they inadvertently perpetuate the problem.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #832457
#51. The historic role of the consumer has been nothing more than a giant maw at the end of the mass media's long conveyer belt, the all-absorbing Yin to the mass media's all-producing Yang ... In the age of the internet, no one is a passive consumer anymore because everyone is a media outlet.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #908422
#52. What you need for a participatory system to work: "a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain."

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #911351
#53. [T]he category of 'consumer' is now a temporary behavior rather than a permanent identity.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #938131
#54. Prior to the internet, the last technology that had any real effect on the way people sat down and talked together was the table

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #976881
#55. Social motivations can drive far more participation than personal motivation alone

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #978642
#56. I am not somebody who believes everyone is equally talented; talent remains unequally distributed.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #987213
#57. Behavior is motivation filtered through opportunity.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #988670
#58. The centrality of group effort to human life means that anything that changes the way groups function will have profound ramifications for everything from commerce and government to media and religion.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1005788
#59. The more people are involved in a given task, the more potential agreements need to be negotiated to do anything, and the greater the transaction costs.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1007587
#60. I certainly never intended for myself an academic career and, were the academy to suffer, I'd just go do something else. I don't have a commitment to it or to really, frankly, almost any institution that assumes that it has to be stable forever.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1038956
#61. We use the word 'organization' to mean both the state of being organized and the groups that do the organizing.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1097493
#62. Curation comes up when search stops working,

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1176228
#63. The low cost of aggregating information also allowed the formalization of sharing [ ... ].

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1215911
#64. There is no news industry.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1250381
#65. The tools that a society uses to create and maintain itself are as central to human life as a hive is to bee life. Though the hive is not part of any individual bee, it is part of the colony, both shaped by and shaping the lives of its inhabitants.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1261807
#66. You used to have to own a radio tower or television tower or printing press. Now all you have to have is access to an Internet cafe or a public library, and you can put your thoughts out in public.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1281899
#67. Using the market to gradually fix a totalitarian government is like making a pot of tea by running a volcano through a glacier.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1286324
#68. Human beings are social creatures - not occasionally or by accident but always. Sociability is one of our lives as both cause and effect.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1290782
#69. Our social life is literally primal, in the sense that chimpanzees and gorillas, our closest relatives among the primates, are also social.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1298142
#70. 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

Clay Shirky Quotes #1299800
#71. The other is Shenzhen, the southern city most known for electronics manufacturing - it is the location of the largest Foxconn factory, where iPhones and iPads, among other devices, are assembled.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1302309
#72. The Dean campaign had accidentally created a movement for a passionate few rather than a vote-getting operation.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1325500
#73. One of the biggest changes in our society is the shift from prevention to reaction ...

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1348736
#74. It is our misfortune, as a historical generation, to live through the largest expansion in expressive capability in human history, a misfortune because abundance breaks more things than scarcity.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1413416
#75. 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

Clay Shirky Quotes #1421993
#76. 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

Clay Shirky Quotes #1436000
#77. Because Wikipedia is a process, not a product, it replaces guarantees offered by institutions with probabilities supported by process.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1455639
#78. People want to do something to make the world a better place. They will help when they are invited to.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1482049
#79. For the last hundred years the big organizational question has been whether any given task was best taken on by the state, directing the effort in a planned way, or by businesses competing in a market.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1602903
#80. [C]ollaborative production is simple: no one person can take credit for what gets created, and the project could not come into being without the participation of many.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1614776
#81. I removed 'cyberspace' from my vernacular. The idea, which I grew up with, of going into a place separate from the real world, is something my students just don't recognise.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1637126
#82. [B]ecause the minimum costs of being an organization in the first place are relatively high, certain activities may have some value but not enough to make them worth pursuing in any organized way. New social tools are altering this equation by lowering the costs of coordinating group action.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1643287
#83. The great tension in media has always been that freedom and quality are conflicting goals.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1650099
#84. Until recently, 'the news' has meant to different things - events that are newsworthy, and events covered by the press.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1651910
#85. It's not information overload. It's filter failure.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1662051
#86. Think about spam filters; if email didn't come from someone that someone you know knows, that's an important signal, and one we could embed in the environment; we just don't. I just want the world to be filtered through my social graph.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1668624
#87. A revolution doesn't happen when society adopts new tools. It happens when society adopts new behaviors

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1717828
#88. When I say 'publishing is the new literacy,' I don't mean there's no role for curation, for improving material, for editing material, for fact-checking material. I mean literally, the act of putting something out in public used to be reserved in the same way.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1722515
#89. [F]or any group determined to maintain a set of communal standards some mechanism of enforcement must exist.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1732486
#90. Wikipedia is forcing people to accept the stone-cold bummer that knowledge is produced and constructed by argument rather than by divine inspiration.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1767266
#91. Personal value is the kind of value we receive from being active instead of passive, creative instead of consumptive.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1778947
#92. The loss of control you fear is already in the past.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1792635
#93. One of the best ways to know you're completely wrong, is to behave as if you're complete right.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1793796
#94. multitude of books is a great evil

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Clay Shirky Quotes #1808167
#95. It did not take long after the rise of the commercial printing press before someone figured out that erotic novels were a good idea ... It took people another 150 years to even think of the scientific journal.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1812354
#96. A firm is successful when the costs of directing employee effort are lower than the potential gain from directing.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1814432
#97. Curiously, once technology gets boring, the social effects get interesting.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1838146
#98. Curation comes up when people realize that it isn't just about information seeking, it's also about synchronizing a community.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1846763
#99. Wikipedia [ ... ] is the product not of collectivism but of unending argumentation.

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1877009
#100. The future presented by the internet is the mass amateurization of publishing and a switch from 'Why publish this?' to 'Why not?

Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky Quotes #1878945

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