Clay Shirky

communicate society change

“When we change the way we communicate, we change society”

― Clay Shirky

shirky - institution problem

“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.”

— Clay Shirky

information overload filter failure

“It’s not information overload. It’s filter failure.”

― Clay Shirky

communication tool social interesting technologically boring

“Communications tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.”

― Clay Shirky

social tool improvement challenge modern society

“Our social tools are not an improvement to modern society, they are a challenge to it.”

― Clay Shirky

wikipedia process product article

“A Wikipedia article is a process, not a product.”

― Clay Shirky

knowledge information human characteristic

“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

wikipedia product collectivism endless argumentation

“Wikipedia [...] is the product not of collectivism but of unending argumentation.”

― Clay Shirky

misfortune historical generation abundance scarcity

“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

sharing group aggregate participant cooperate identity

“Unlike sharing, where the group is mainly an aggregate of participants, cooperating creates group identity.”

― Clay Shirky

personal value active passive creative consumptive

“Personal value is the kind of value we receive from being active instead of passive, creative instead of consumptive.”

― Clay Shirky

revolution society adopt technology behaviour

“Revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new technologies—it happens when society adopts new behaviors.”

― Clay Shirky