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

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.

We systematically overestimate the value of access to information and underestimate the value of access to each other.

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

What you need for a participatory system to work: "a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain."

The waterfall method amounts to a pledge by all parties not to learn anything while doing the actual work.

Indeed, the best practical reason to think that social media can help bring political change is that both dissidents and governments think they can. All over the world, activists believe in the utility of these tools and take steps to use them accordingly. And the governments they contend with think social media tools are powerful, too, and are willing to harass, arrest, exile, or kill users in response.