Clay Shirky Quotes

Anybody who predicts the death of cities has already met his spouse.

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 distracting and entertaining material and stay focused instead of some sophisticated task.

In a profession, members are only partly guided by service to the public.

[B]ecause the minimum costs of being an organization in the first place are relatively high, certain activities may have some value but not enough to make them worth pursuing in any organized way. New social tools are altering this equation by lowering the costs of coordinating group action.

Unlike sharing, where the group is mainly an aggregate of participants, cooperating creates group identity.