For most of modern life, our strong talents and desires for group effort have been filtered through relatively rigid institutional structures because of the complexity of managing groups. We haven't had all the groups we've wanted, we've simply had the groups we could afford. The old limits of what unmanaged and unpaid groups can do are no longer in operation.
Clay ShirkyWith the old economics destroyed, organizational forms perfected for industrial production have to be replaced with structures optimized for digital data. It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves — the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public — has stopped being a problem.
Clay ShirkyThere 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 ShirkyOur social life is literally primal, in the sense that chimpanzees and gorillas, our closest relatives among the primates, are also social.
Clay ShirkyIf what you're doing is valuable for people, they will find a way to pay you to keep doing it.
Clay ShirkyThe 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 ShirkyThe future presented by the internet is the mass amateurization of publishing and a switch from 'Why publish this?' to 'Why not?
Clay ShirkySo 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 ShirkyEven with the sacred printing press, we got erotic novels 150 years before we got scientific journals.
Clay ShirkyThink about spam filters; if email didnt come from someone that someone you know knows, thats an important signal, and one we could embed in the environment; we just dont. I just want the world to be filtered through my social graph.
Clay ShirkyThe 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[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 ShirkyTrying to express implicit and fuzzy relationships in ways that are explicit and sharp doesn't clarify the meaning, it destroys it.
Clay ShirkyThe 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 ShirkyIt 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 ShirkyThe more ideas there are in circulation, the more ideas there are for any individual to disagree with. More media always means more arguing.
Clay ShirkyEgalitarianism is possible only in small social systems. Once a medium gets past a certain size fame is a forced move.
Clay ShirkyThe 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 ShirkyThe transfer of [...] capabilities from various professional classes to the general public is epochal.
Clay ShirkyWe use the word 'organization' to mean both the state of being organized and the groups that do the organizing.
Clay ShirkyMulti-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 ShirkyCommunications tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.
Clay ShirkyIt 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 ShirkyWe are in a world where most American citizens over the age of 12 share things with each other online.
Clay ShirkyThere 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 ShirkyIt 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 ShirkyAny system described by a power law [...] has several curious effects. The first is that, by definition, most participants are below average.
Clay ShirkyA revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new tools. It happens when society adopts new behaviors
Clay ShirkyWhat you need for a participatory system to work: "a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain."
Clay Shirky