167 Quotes by Clay Shirky

[R]elying on nonfinancial motivations may actually make systems more tolerant of variable participation.

[F]or any group determined to maintain a set of communal standards some mechanism of enforcement must exist.

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

For the last hundred years the big organizational question has been whether any given task was best taken on by the state, directing the effort in a planned way, or by businesses competing in a market.

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

An organization will tend to grow only when the advantages that can be gotten from directing the work of additional employees are less than the transaction costs of managing them.

[N]ew technology enables new kinds of group-forming.

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

Civic participants don't aim to make life better merely for members of the group. They want to improve even the lives of people who never participate...