“ The tools that a society uses to create and maintain itself are as central to human life as a hive is to bee life. Though the hive is not part of any individual bee, it is part of the colony, both sha… Clay Shirky
“ 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... Clay Shirky
“ Sharing thoughts and expressions and even actions with others, possibly many others, is becoming a normal opportunity, not just for professionals and experts but for anyone who wants it. This opportun… Clay Shirky
“ People want to do something to make the world a better place. They will help when they are invited to. Clay Shirky
“ 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. Clay Shirky
“ I would not hesitate to say I was addicted to the Internet in the first two years. It can be addictive, and things not taken in moderation have negative effects. But the alarmism around 'Facebook is c… Clay Shirky
“ The downside of attending to the emotional life of groups is that it can swamp the ability to get anything done; a group can become more concerned with satisfying its members than with achieving its g… Clay Shirky
“ Mass amateurization of publishing makes mass amateurization of filtering a forced move. Clay Shirky
“ [T]he category of 'consumer' is now a temporary behavior rather than a permanent identity. Clay Shirky
“ [T]he ways in which the information we give off about our selves, in photos and e-mails and MySpace pages and all the rest of it, has dramatically increased our social visibility and made it easier fo… Clay Shirky
“ Communications tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring. Clay Shirky
“ This work is not easy, and it never goes smoothly. Because we are hopelessly committed to both individual and group effectiveness, groups committed to public or civic value are rarely permanent. Inste… Clay Shirky
“ Public and civic value require commitment and hard work among the core group of participants. It also requires that these groups be self-governing and submit to constraints that help them ignore distr… Clay Shirky
“ Unlike sharing, where the group is mainly an aggregate of participants, cooperating creates group identity. 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
“ Because Wikipedia is a process, not a product, it replaces guarantees offered by institutions with probabilities supported by process. Clay Shirky
