4 ms·

Wow this guy was straight up prescient. I’ve never read his blogs until today - thanks for sharing this.

Alex3917 5y ago
I would honestly start with his presentations, they are amazing: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=clay+shirky https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=clay+shirky
rwmj 5y ago
I wasn't quite sure when he wrote this. The earliest capture in the Internet Archive was January 2000, but it could be from earlier than that maybe? I do remember that it was quite prescient when I first read it, although it's sort of obvious in 2022.
- Forgeties79 5y ago
  Yeah that’s sort of what I’m driving at. He called a lot of stuff that wasn’t exactly an easy take.
jacquesm 5y ago
Highly recommended: http://web.archive.org/web/20140117014453/http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html http://web.archive.org/web/20140117014453/http://www.shirky....
- walterbell 5y ago
  Classic essay. > People who work on social software are closer in spirit to economists and political scientists than they are to people making compilers. They both look like programming, but when you're dealing with groups of people as one of your run-time phenomena, that is an incredibly different practice. In the political realm, we would call these kinds of crises a constitutional crisis. It's what happens when the tension between the individual and the group, and the rights and responsibilities of individuals and groups, gets so serious that something has to be done. > And the worst crisis is the first crisis, because it's not just "We need to have some rules." It's also "We need to have some rules for making some rules." And this is what we see over and over again in large and long-lived social software systems. Constitutions are a necessary component of large, long-lived, heterogenous groups.
  - Forgeties79 5y ago
    That part really resonated with me too. Lots to unpack.
    - walterbell 5y ago
      I wonder what Clay Shirky thinks about blockchains and cryptocurrency.

I would honestly start with his presentations, they are amazing: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=clay+shirky https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=clay+shirky

rwmj 5y ago

I wasn't quite sure when he wrote this. The earliest capture in the Internet Archive was January 2000, but it could be from earlier than that maybe? I do remember that it was quite prescient when I first read it, although it's sort of obvious in 2022.

Forgeties79 5y ago
Yeah that’s sort of what I’m driving at. He called a lot of stuff that wasn’t exactly an easy take.

jacquesm 5y ago

Highly recommended: http://web.archive.org/web/20140117014453/http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html http://web.archive.org/web/20140117014453/http://www.shirky....

walterbell 5y ago
Classic essay. > People who work on social software are closer in spirit to economists and political scientists than they are to people making compilers. They both look like programming, but when you're dealing with groups of people as one of your run-time phenomena, that is an incredibly different practice. In the political realm, we would call these kinds of crises a constitutional crisis. It's what happens when the tension between the individual and the group, and the rights and responsibilities of individuals and groups, gets so serious that something has to be done. > And the worst crisis is the first crisis, because it's not just "We need to have some rules." It's also "We need to have some rules for making some rules." And this is what we see over and over again in large and long-lived social software systems. Constitutions are a necessary component of large, long-lived, heterogenous groups.
- Forgeties79 5y ago
  That part really resonated with me too. Lots to unpack.
  - walterbell 5y ago
    I wonder what Clay Shirky thinks about blockchains and cryptocurrency.