Clay Shirky Quotes

When we change the way we communicate, we change society

Tragedy of the Commons: while each person can agree that all would benefit from common restraint, the incentives of the individuals are arrayed against that outcome.

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.

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

[N]ew technology enables new kinds of group-forming.

In a profession, members are only partly guided by service to the public.

[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.

The transfer of [...] capabilities from various professional classes to the general public is epochal.

Society is not just the product of its individual members; it is also the product of its constituent groups.

[F]rom now on, the act of creating and circulating evidence of wrongdoing to more than a few people, even if they all work together, will be seen as a delayed but public act.