Curation comes up when people realize that it isnβt just about information seeking, itβs also about synchronizing a community.
Clay ShirkyRead
How we put our collective talents to work is a social issue, not solely a personal one.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Collective action and the utilization of talents are issues that affect society as a whole, rather than just individuals.
This quote emphasizes the idea that the way we harness and apply our collective skills and talents has significant implications for society. It suggests that our individual contributions are interconnected, and the responsibility to address social issues lies not only with individuals but with the collective efforts of communities.
Themes
CollectiveTalentsSocialIssueCommunity
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about teamwork at work, this quote illustrates the importance of collaboration.
More from Clay Shirky
All quotes βIt is our misfortune, as a historical generation, to live through the largest expansion in expressive capability in human history, a misfortune because abundance breaks more things than scarcity.
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What I think is coming instead are much more organic ways of organizing information than our current categorization schemes allow, based on two units - the link, which can point to anything, and the tag, which is a way of attaching labels to links. The strategy of tagging - free-form labeling, without regard to categorical constraints - seems like a recipe for disaster, but as the Web has shown us, you can extract a surprising amount of value from big messy data sets.
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It is possible to think that the Internet will be a net positive for society while admitting that there are significant downsides - after all, it's not a revolution if nobody loses.
Clay ShirkyRead
Wikipedia took the idea of peer review and applied it to volunteers on a global scale, becoming the most important English reference work in less than 10 years. Yet the cumulative time devoted to creating Wikipedia, something like 100 million hours of human thought, is expended by Americans every weekend, just watching ads.
Clay ShirkyRead
If someone around you is multitasking, you pick up distraction like second-hand smoke.
Clay ShirkyRead
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