Clay Shirky
Clay Shirky at the 2006 O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference
Born	1964 (age 45–46) Columbia, Missouri
Occupation	Adjunct Professor
Known for	Writing

Clay Shirky (born 1964^[1]) is an American writer, consultant and teacher on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. He teaches New Media as an adjunct professor at New York University's (NYU) graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). 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.^[2]

He has written and been interviewed extensively 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. Current clients include Nokia, GBN, the U.S. Library of Congress, the Highlands Forum, the Markle Foundation and the BBC.

Contents 1 Early years and career 2 Views 3 Books 4 Footnotes 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Early years and career

Shirky received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University.^[3]

In the early 1990s, 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 Internet culture in Shea v. Reno, a case cited in the U. S. Supreme Court's decision to strike down the Communications Decency Act in 1996.

[edit] Views

Shirky has long spoken in favor of crowdsourcing and collaborative efforts online, using the phrase "the Internet runs on love" to describe the nature of such collaborations.^[4] He popularized the concept of cognitive surplus, the time freed from watching television which can be enormously productive when applied to other social endeavors.

In The Long Tail, Chris Anderson calls Shirky "a prominent thinker on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies."^[5]

[edit] Books

• The Internet by E-Mail (1994) - ISBN 1-56276-240-0
• Voices from the Net (1995) - ISBN 1-56276-303-2
• P2P Networking Overview (2001) - ISBN 0-596-00185-1
• Planning for Web Services: Obstacles and Opportunities (2003) - ISBN 0-596-00364-1
• The Best Software Writing I (2005) - ISBN 1-59059-500-9
• Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (2008) - ISBN 978-1594201530

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] See also

• Collective action

[edit] References

• Shirky, Clay (2003). "Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality". Writings About the Internet. http://shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html. Retrieved 2006-02-16. 
• MacLeod, Hugh (2006). "Shirky's Law: "Equality. Fairness. Opportunity. Pick Two."". gapingvoid. http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/002238.html. Retrieved 2006-02-16. 

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Clay Shirky

• Clay Shirky's homepage
• Clay Shirky on Twitter
• Clay Shirky’s writings on the O'Reilly Network
• 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. http://www.isoc-ny.org/?p=214. Retrieved 2008-04-27.  - Colloquium @ NYU.
• How social media can make history, June 2009 at TED (conference)
• Institutions vs. collaboration, July 2005 at TED (conference)
• Clay Shirky at Web 2.0 Expo SF 2008
• Video (and audio) of interview/discussion with Clay Shirky by Will Wilkinson on Bloggingheads.tv
• Here Comes Everybody
• Interview/discussion with Clay Shirky on MFG Innovationcast, episode 20 (24. June 9) - in English starting from minute 02:35
• Thinking the Unthinkable Shirky's essay on the newspaper revolution
• Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom A talk about journalism and pay walls.