Words matter. These are the best Clay Shirky Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Algorithms don’t do a good job of detecting their own flaws.
Whether it’s long-form journalism or investigative journalism, it’s no fun to just be the guy diagnosing the problem.
We are in a world where most American citizens over the age of 12 share things with each other online.
Growing up with a name that rhymes with turkey – and jerky – was no great fun. But, as an adult, I tell you, being globally unique in the age of Google can be extremely helpful.
I certainly never intended for myself an academic career and, were the academy to suffer, I’d just go do something else. I don’t have a commitment to it or to really, frankly, almost any institution that assumes that it has to be stable forever.
I removed ‘cyberspace’ from my vernacular. The idea, which I grew up with, of going into a place separate from the real world, is something my students just don’t recognise.
Think about spam filters; if email didn’t come from someone that someone you know knows, that’s an important signal, and one we could embed in the environment; we just don’t. I just want the world to be filtered through my social graph.
More interesting than thinking about what’s possible in 10 years is thinking what’s possible now but that no one has built.
Human beings are social creatures – not occasionally or by accident but always. Sociability is one of our lives as both cause and effect.
The more ideas there are in circulation, the more ideas there are for any individual to disagree with. More media always means more arguing.
How we put our collective talents to work is a social issue, not solely a personal one.
Facebook is not very good at dealing with named groups; they’re not very good at saying, ‘We’ve got this book club and I’m a member and you’re not.’ But membership is one of the precursors to a lot of social action.
When I say ‘publishing is the new literacy,’ I don’t mean there’s no role for curation, for improving material, for editing material, for fact-checking material. I mean literally, the act of putting something out in public used to be reserved in the same way.
There 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.
You used to have to own a radio tower or television tower or printing press. Now all you have to have is access to an Internet cafe or a public library, and you can put your thoughts out in public.
