Clay Shirky

When you adopt a tool you adopt the management philosophy embedded in that tool.

— Clay Shirky

We are in a world where most American citizens over the age of 12 share things with each other online.

— Clay Shirky

“The stupidest possible creative act is still a creative act.”

— Clay Shirky

How we put our collective talents to work is a social issue, not solely a personal one.

— Clay Shirky

Tools get socially interesting after they're no longer technologically interesting.

— Clay Shirky

“[T]he category of 'consumer' is now a temporary behavior rather than a permanent identity.”

— Clay Shirky

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

— Clay Shirky

One of the biggest changes in our society is the shift from prevention to reaction...

— Clay Shirky

Growing up with a name that rhymes with turkey - and jerky - was no great fun. But, as an adult, I…

— Clay Shirky

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

— Clay Shirky

We use the word 'organization' to mean both the state of being organized and the groups that do the organizing.

— Clay Shirky

We have lived in this world where little things are done for love and big things for money. Now we have Wikipedia.…

— Clay Shirky

The more people are involved in a given task, the more potential agreements need to be negotiated to do anything, and the…

— Clay Shirky

“The basic capabilities of tools like Flickr reverse the old order of group activity, transforming 'gather, then share' into 'share, then gather'.”

— Clay Shirky

There are three things you need to be a good writer: you need to read a lot, you need to write a…

— Clay Shirky

Whether it's long-form journalism or investigative journalism, it's no fun to just be the guy diagnosing the problem.

— Clay Shirky

The web's democratic in one way and distinctly undemocratic in another way. And I think a lot of the confusion about the…

— Clay Shirky

To have a discussion about the plusses and minuses of various forms of group action, though, is going to require discussing the…

— Clay Shirky

Bureaucracies temporarily suspend the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In a bureaucracy, it's easier to make a process more complex than to make…

— Clay Shirky

The tools that a society uses to create and maintain itself are as central to human life as a hive is to…

— Clay Shirky

For most of modern life, our strong talents and desires for group effort have been filtered through relatively rigid institutional structures because…

— Clay Shirky

So forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this - the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by…

— Clay Shirky

There is a giant gulf between doing something and doing nothing. And someone who makes a lolcat and uploads it - even…

— Clay Shirky

I certainly never intended for myself an academic career and, were the academy to suffer, I'd just go do something else. I…

— Clay Shirky

“The low cost of aggregating information also allowed the formalization of sharing [...].”

— Clay Shirky

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

— Clay Shirky

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

— Clay Shirky

I am not somebody who believes everyone is equally talented; talent remains unequally distributed.

— Clay Shirky

The great tension in media has always been that freedom and quality are conflicting goals.

— Clay Shirky

When we change the way we communicate, we change society.

— Clay Shirky

“The systemic bias for continuity creates tolerance for the substandard.”

— Clay Shirky

There's no such thing as information overload-only filter failure.

— Clay Shirky

One of the best ways to know you're completely wrong, is to behave as if you're complete right.

— Clay Shirky

Curiously, once technology gets boring, the social effects get interesting.

— Clay Shirky

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

— Clay Shirky

If someone around you is multitasking, you pick up distraction like second-hand smoke.

— Clay Shirky

“Mass amateurization of publishing makes mass amateurization of filtering a forced move.”

— Clay Shirky

Behavior is motivation filtered through opportunity.

— Clay Shirky

We're not good at thinking fast. We are good at feeling fast.

— Clay Shirky

A revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new tools. It happens when society adopts new behaviors

— Clay Shirky