167 Quotes by Clay Shirky

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

We are moving from sharing to cooperation to collective action.

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

Bureaucracies temporarily suspend the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In a bureaucracy, it's easier to make a process more complex than to make it simpler, and easier to create a new burden than kill an old one.

More interesting than thinking about whats possible in 10 years is thinking whats possible now but that no one has built.

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

Wikipedia is forcing people to accept the stone-cold bummer that knowledge is produced and constructed by argument rather than by divine inspiration.

Egalitarianism is possible only in small social systems. Once a medium gets past a certain size fame is a forced move.

Publishing is not evolving. Publishing is going away. Because the word "publishing" means a cadre of professionals who are taking on the incredible difficulty and complexity and expense of making something public. That's not a job anymore. That's a button. There's a button that says "publish," and when you press it, it's done.