Clay Shirky
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Clay Shirky |
Clay Shirky speaking at a PIPA and SOPA protest, January 2012 |
| Born |
1964 (age 48–49)
Columbia, Missouri |
| Occupation |
Writer, consultant, lecturer[1] |
| Known for |
Writing |
Clay Shirky (born 1964
[2]) is an
American writer, consultant and teacher on the social and economic effects of
Internet technologies. He has a joint appointment at
New York University (NYU) as a Distinguished Writer in Residence at the
Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and Assistant Arts Professor in the
New Media focused graduate
Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP).
[3] His courses address, among other things, the interrelated effects of the
topology of
social networks and technological networks, how our networks shape culture and vice-versa.
[4]
He has written and been interviewed about the Internet since 1996. His columns and writings have appeared in
Business 2.0, the
New York Times, the
Wall Street Journal, the
Harvard Business Review and
Wired.
Shirky divides his time between consulting, teaching, and writing on
the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. His consulting
practice is focused on the rise of decentralized technologies such as
peer-to-peer,
web services, and
wireless networks that provide alternatives to the wired
client–server infrastructure that characterizes the
World Wide Web. He is a member of the Wikimedia Foundation's
Advisory Board. In
The Long Tail,
Chris Anderson calls Shirky "a prominent thinker on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies."
[5]
Education and career
After graduating from
Yale University with a
Bachelor of Arts degree in fine art in 1986, he moved to
New York.
[6] In the 1990s he founded the Hard Place Theater, a
theatre company that produced
non-fiction theater using only found materials such as government documents, transcripts and cultural records.
[6] and also worked as a
lighting designer for other theater and dance companies, including
the Wooster Group,
Elevator Repair Service and Dana Reitz.
[7] During this time, Shirky was vice-president of the New York chapter of the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, and wrote technology guides for
Ziff Davis. He appeared as an expert witness on
cyberculture in
Shea v. Reno, a case cited in the
U. S. Supreme Court's decision to strike down the
Communications Decency Act in 1996.
Shirky was the first Professor of
New Media in the Media Studies department at
Hunter College, where he developed the
MFA in Integrated Media Arts program.
In the fall of 2010, Shirky was a visiting Morrow Lecturer at
Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government[8] instructing a course titled: "New Media and Public Action".
[9]
Views
In his book
Here Comes Everybody, Shirky explains how he has long spoken in favor of
crowdsourcing and collaborative efforts online. He uses the phrase "the Internet runs on love" to describe the nature of such collaborations.
[10]
In the book, he discusses the ways in which the action of a group adds
up to something more than just aggregated individual action borrowing
the phrase "more is different" from physicist
Philip Warren Anderson.
Shirky asserts that collaborative crowdsourced work results from "a
successful fusion of a plausible promise, and effective tool and an
acceptable bargain with the users." He states that the promise of what
the user will get out of participating in a project leads to a person's
desire to get involved. Collaborators will then choose the best social
networking tool to do the job. One that "must be designed to fit the job
being done, and it must help people do something they actually want to
do." The bargain, Shirky states, defines what collaborators expect from
each other's participation in the project.
[11] Shirky's Promise, Tool, Bargain premise restates aspects of the
Uses and Gratifications Theory of mass media research.
He points to four key steps. The first is sharing, a sort of
“me-first collaboration” in which the social effects are aggregated
after the fact; people share links,
URLs,
tags, and eventually come together around a type. This type of sharing
is a reverse of the so-called old order of sharing, where participants
congregate first and then share (examples include
Flickr, and
Delicious).
The second is conversation, that is, the synchronization of people with
each other and the coming together to learn more about something and to
get better at it. The third is collaboration, in which a group forms
under the purpose of some common effort. It requires a division of
labor, and teamwork. It can often be characterized by people wanting to
fix a market failure, and is motivated by increasing accessibility.
The fourth and final step is
collective action,
which Shirky says is “mainly still in the future.” The key point about
collective action is that the fate of the group as a whole becomes
important.
Shirky also introduces his theory of
mass amateurization:
- Our social tools remove older obstacles to public expression, and
thus remove the bottlenecks that characterized mass media. The result is
the mass amateurization of efforts previously reserved for media
professionals.
Combined with the lowering of transaction costs associated with creating content,
mass amateurization of publishing changes the question from "Why publish this?" to "Why not?"
[12] Tied to
mass amateurization is the idea of
publish-then-filter which is now required due to the mere size and amount of material being created on a daily basis. Shirky calls this
mass amateurization of filtering a forced move. He uses the
Portland Pattern Repository which became
Wikipedia as an example of this new marriage of mass content creation and mass filtering.
In 2010 Shirky published
Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age
which expands on themes introduced in Here Comes Everybody. The book
follows concepts he introduced in a Web 2. 0 conference presentation
April 23, 2008 called "Gin, Television, and Social Surplus",
[13] Herein he popularizes the concept of
cognitive surplus,
the time freed from watching television which can be enormously
productive when applied to other social endeavors. Technology has turned
many past consumers into producers. This new production capacity,
combined with humanity's willingness to share, can change society if
applied to
civic endeavors.
Shirky introduces Cognitive Surplus as a continuation of his work in
Here Comes Everybody.
"This book picks up where that one left off, starting with the
observation that the wiring of humanity lets us treat free time as a
shared global resource, and lets us design new kinds of participation
and sharing that take advantage of that resource."
[14]
Shirky has also written about "algorithmic authority," which
describes the process through which unverified information is vetted for
its trustworthiness through multiple sources.
[15][16]
Institutions vs Collaboration
In July 2005, Shirky gave a talk entitled "Institutions vs collaboration" as a part of TEDGlobal 2005.
[17] This presentation reveals many of the ideas and concepts that would ultimately be presented in
Here Comes Everybody and in future TED talks. Shirky compares the
coordination costs
between groups formed under traditional institutions and those formed
by groups which "build cooperation into the infrastructure."
[17]
Classic institutions have to create economic, management, legal and
physical structures and inherently, by creating these rigid structures,
must exclude large numbers of people. Companies like
Flickr,
however, since they built "cooperation into the infrastructure" of
their company, do not have to build massive infrastructure nor exclude
large groups of potential contributors. Shirky states that since many
social systems follow the
Pareto principle wherein 20% of contributors account for 80% of contributions, traditional institutions lose out of the
long tail of contributors by turning only the few that dominate the distribution into employees. The
cooperative infrastructure model escapes having to lose this resource. Shirky presents an
institution as enabler and
institution as obstacle concept.
For the few, high-volume contributors, they can be assimilated, as
employees, into the old-style corporate model thus can live in an
"institution-as-enabler world". The
long tail
of contributors, however, who make few and infrequent contributions,
see institutions as an obstacle as they would never have been hired,
therefore, disenfranchised. Shirky argues that an idea or contribution
may be infrequent and significant. Furthermore, all of the
long tail
contributors, taken in aggregate, can be substantial. One pitfall of
the "mass amateurs" creating their own groups is that not all niches
that are filled will be positive ones; Shirky presents
pro-ana
groups as an example. Shirky closes by stating that the migration from
institutions to self-organizing, collaborative groups will not be a
complete migration and will not end in a utopian society. Rather chaos
will follow as the
printing press before it created and that this period of transition will last roughly fifty years.
Evolution of Asymmetric Media
In June of 2009, Shirky participated in a TED@State talk entitled
"How cellphones, Twitter and Facebook can make history" aka "How social
media can make history."
[18]
In the talk, he explains that this is the first time in history that
communication is possible from many, to many. In the past, communication
to a large group excluded the possibility of having a conversation, and
having a conversation meant not interacting with a group but was
necessarily a one-to-one structure. Shirky labels this incongruous
exchange as asymmetric. This feature is one of the main reasons that the
internet revolution is different from communication revolutions that
proceeded it.
[18]
The second difference between the twentieth and twenty-first century
communication revolution, Shirky states, is now all media is digitized.
This means that the Internet now encapsulates all forms of media from
the past and the medium itself has become the site of exchange, just not
a means of exchange. Finally, the Internet allows people to create
content thus the line between producers and consumers has become
blurred. As Shirky puts it, "Every time a new consumer joins this media
landscape, a new producer joins as well."
[18]
Even countries like China, as Shirky gives as an example, go to great
lengths to control information exchange on the Internet but are having
trouble as the "amateurization" of media creation has effectively turned
every owner of a cellphone and Twitter account into a journalist. The
populace as a whole, Shirky claims, is a force much harder to control
than a handful of professional news sources. He compares the "Great
Firewall of China" to the
Maginot Line
as both were built to protect from external threats but that is not
where the majority of content is being created in this new media
landscape. As an example of the potential of this two-way, collaborative
environment, Shirky believes we are now living in, he presents as a
case study MyBarackObama.com. Over the issue of the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,
members of the website were upset of Obama's announcement that he was
changing his stance and that now he was going to sign the bill "that
granted immunity for possibly warrantless spying on American persons."
[18]Despite
the disagreement between the President and the posters opposed to his
altered view, Shirky sites the mere fact that the President posted a
reply to their concerns, instead of persecuting/ignoring the group, as
hope for the future of this new form of mass media.
The Shirky Principle
In April 2010,
Kevin Kelly
cited the phrase "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to
which they are the solution," and called it the "Shirky Principle", as
the phrasing reminded him of the clarity of the
Peter Principle.
[19][20][21]
Communal Value vs Civic Value
In June 2010, Shirky participated in TED@Cannes wherein he spoke about
cognitive surplus and its role furthering
communal and
civic value.
[22]
The talk was entitled, "How cognitive surplus will change the world,"
and the possibility for change, which Shirky presents, runs the spectrum
at one end with
communal value being increased and at the other end with
civic value being furthered. Digital technology has allowed human generosity and "the world's free time and talents," which Shirky calls
cognitive surplus, to combine and create a new form of creative expression. This creative expression can take the from of
lolcats or endeavors such as
Ushahidi; the former Shirky says increases
communal value, "it is created by the participants for each other" for simple amusement, whereas the latter he sites furthers
civic value meaning the group action is taken to benefit society as a whole. Shirky then presents the view that society lives under
social constraint and that these
social constraints can create a culture that is "more generous than" the environment created by
contractual constraints alone.
[22] Understanding where the economic or
contractual motivation of a situation ends and where the
social
part begins, Shirky claims is key when designing to maximize
generosity. This being the case, to have society use its "trillion hours
a year of participatory value" to advance
civic value, society itself simply needs to prize, and collectively praise, endeavors like
Ushahidi.
Response to Evgeny Morozov
In March 2011, Shirky responded to questions raised by
Evgeny Morozov
about consulting he had done for the Libyan government. Shirky
explained that he had been invited in 2007 to speak in Boston to Libya's
IT Minister.
[23]
Shirky stated that the talk was "about using social software to improve
citizen engagement in coastal towns. The idea was that those cities
would be more economically successful if local policies related to the
tourist trade were designed by the locals themselves." Shirky added that
nothing came of the project beyond his initial talk. He defended his
underlying desire to expand representative government in Libya and
concluded that "the best reason to believe that social media can aid
citizens in their struggle to make government more responsive is that
both citizens and governments believe that."
Reaction to SOPA
In January 2012, at TED Salon NY, Shirky gave a talk entitled "Why SOPA is a bad idea."
[24] He sites
SOPA
as a way for traditional, mass media producers to, "raise the cost of
copyright compliance to the point where people simply get out of the
business of offering it as a capability to amateurs."
[24]
After an offending internet site is identified, the identification
process itself is not specified in the bill, the targeted site will be
removed from the
domain name system. Shirky claims since you can still use the static ip address of the site in question, removal from
DNS
is futile. He identifies the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 as a law
that was able to delineate between sharing with your friends as being
legal and selling for commercial gain as illegal. Unsatisfied, media
companies, Shirky claims, continued to push government to create more
sweeping legislation which would hinder any form of sharing. This
pressure, in 1998, created the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
It was now legal for media companies to sell uncopyable material
although uncopyable digital material does not exist. To remedy this
fact, Shirky states that media companies now tried to break consumer's
computer hardware to create the illusion that the media they purchased
was indeed uncopyable.
- The DMCA marks the moment when the media industries gave up on the
legal system of distinguishing between legal and illegal copying and
simply tried to prevent copying through technical means.
Whereas
DMCA
was "surgical," SOPA is "nuclear" since the law stipulates any sites
pointing to "illegal" content may be censored. Ultimately, Shirky points
out the public-at-large is by far the largest producers of content and
they are the ones that which will be censured. They will be presumed
guilty until they can prove that the content they published is not
illegal. This turns the american legal system on its head. He closes by
encouraging Americans to contact their senators and congressmen and
reminding them they "don't like to be treated like a thief."
[24]
Distributed Version Control and Democracy
On June 29, 2012, Shirky participated in Session 12: Public Sphere of TEDGlobal 2012.
[25]Shirky made the observation that many of the technological advancements in communication throughout history, from the
printing press to the
television,
were heralded as harbingers of world peace yet ended up creating
greater dissent. "The more ideas there are in circulation, the more
ideas there are for any individual to disagree with."
[25] However, Shirky claims, with this increased "arguing," comes an increased "speed" of information exchange.
[25] Shirky cites "
The Invisible College" as an example of a group that was able to utilize this effect created by the
printing press, via the
scientific journal, to help launch the
scientific revolution.He then states we are in a similar period today with open-source programmers and their use of
distributed version control
or DVCS. DVCS, he argues, allows for "more arguments" to be made into
"better arguments". DVCS also allows for "cooperation without
coordination" which Shirky states is "the big change".
[25]
He then suggests that DVCS fits naturally with law as it, and software
development, are "dependency-related." Another application for DVCS,
which Shirky presents, is the crafting of legislation and uses
Open Legistlation,
a listing of legislative information from the New York State Senate and
Assembly, as an early step in that direction. The talk culminates with
Shirky posing the open question of whether or not government will
transition from striving towards one-way transparency to mutual
collaboration and suggests if it does there is already a "new form of
arguing" centered around DVCS to aid the transition.
[25]
Bibliography
See also
- ^ "Shirky: Tisch School of the Arts at NYU". About.tisch.nyu.edu. Retrieved 2011-06-03.
- ^ "Clay Shirky of New York, New York, USA". PeekYou. 2008-04-27. Retrieved 2011-06-03.
- ^ "New Media Expert Clay Shirky to Become Professor at NYU’s Carter Journalism Institute, Tisch School of the Arts". Nyu.edu. Retrieved 2011-06-03.
- ^ Bio from his official website as of Jan 2 2011 via Wayback
- ^ Anderson, Chris (2008). The Long Tail. Hyperion. ISBN 978-1-4013-0966-4.
- ^ a b "Clay Shirky's Resume". Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Archived from the original on 1999-04-21. Retrieved 2010-08-21.
- ^ "Clay Shirky, Creative Advisor + Technology Consultant". Location One. Retrieved 2010-08-21.
- ^ "Harvard Kennedy School - Clay Shirky". Hks.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2011-06-03.
- ^ "Harvard Kennedy School - New Media and Public Action". Hks.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2011-06-03.
- ^ The Internet Runs on Love: Here Comes Everybody, SuperNova Talk
- ^ Shirky, Clay (2008). Here Comes Everybody. USA: Penguin Books. pp. 260–277. ISBN 9780143114949.
- ^ Shirky, Clay (2008). Here Comes Everybody. USA: Penguin Books. pp. 260–277. ISBN 9780143114949.
- ^ "Gin, Television, and Social Surplus". Archived from the original on 2010-10-16. Retrieved 20 January 2011.
- ^ Shirky, Clay (2010). Cognitive Surplus: How Technology Makes Consumers into Collaborators. USA: Penguin USA. pp. 27. ISBN 9780143119586.
- ^ * "Viewsflow blog", Viewsflow
- ^ Shirky, Clay. "A Speculative Post on the Idea of Algorithmic Authority". Retrieved 18 March 2012.
- ^ a b "Institutions vs Collaboration". TED. Retrieved 10 February 2013.
- ^ a b c d "How social media can change history". TED. Retrieved 10 February 2013.
- ^ Kevin Kelly (2010-04-02). "The Shirky Principle". The Technium. Retrieved 2010-04-09.
- ^ Mike Masnick (2010-04-09). "Institutions Will Seek To Preserve The Problem For Which They Are The Solution". Techdirt. Retrieved 2010-04-09.
- ^ James Grimmelmann (2010-04-09). "The Shirky Principle". PrawfsBlawg. Retrieved 2010-04-09.
- ^ a b "How Cognitive Surplus Will Change The World". TED. Retrieved 10 February 2013.
- ^ Clay Shirky (2011-03-01). "Consulting with Libya in 2007". Clay Shirky. Retrieved 2011-03-25.
- ^ a b c "Why SOPA is a bad idea". TED. Retrieved 9 February 2013.
- ^ a b c d e "How The Internet Will Change Government". TED. Retrieved 9 February 2013.
References
External links
- Clay Shirky's Bio
- Clay Shirky on Twitter
- Clay Shirky’s writings on the O'Reilly Network
- Profile and videos at TED.com
- Socially Intelligent Computing A Dialogue with Daniel Goleman
- Ontology is Overrated: Links, Tags, and Post-hoc Metadata - a presentation (MP3) from the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference held in San Diego, California, March 14–17, 2005.
- Futures of the Internet (Flash, MP4, RealVideo, 3gp, MP3). Internet Society - NY Chapter. 2008-04-16. Retrieved 2008-04-27. - Colloquium @ NYU.
- Clay Shirky at Web 2.0 Expo SF 2008
- "It's Not Information Overload. It's Filter Failure." Video, Clay Shirky at Web 2.0 Expo NY, Sept. 16-19, 2008.
- Video (and audio) of interview/discussion with Clay Shirky by Will Wilkinson on Bloggingheads.tv
- Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom A talk about journalism and pay walls.
Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Shirky
http://www.ted.com
Clay Shirky looks at "cognitive surplus" -- the shared, online work we
do with our spare brain cycles. While we're busy editing Wikipedia,
posting to Ushahidi (and yes, making LOLcats), we're building a better,
more cooperative world.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the
best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's
leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes.
Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe
Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke,
Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on
chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the
"Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure
of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and
TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development
and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of
languages are now available on TED.com, at
http://www.ted.com/translate. Watch a highlight reel of the Top 10 TEDTalks at
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10
The other good point is that we should celebrate and support projects with ‘civic value’. For example, wikipedia, free and open source software, artists and musicians who freely distribute their works, and so forth.
The point of mentioning the daycare experiment is if we think of these things from an economic standpoint we will not see their value.