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Clay Shirky
Clay Shirky at the 2006 O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference
Born	1964 United States
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.

Shirky also popularized the phrase 'the internet runs on love.'^[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. He appeared on The Colbert Report on April 3, 2008.

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.

From the earliest days of the Web, 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 vs. Reno, a case cited in the U. S. Supreme Court's decision to strike down the Communications Decency Act in 1996.

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

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
• Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (2008) - ISBN 978-1594201530

References

• Shirky, Clay (2003). "Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality". Writings About the Internet. Retrieved on 2006-02-16.
• MacLeod, Hugh (2006). "Shirky's Law: "Equality. Fairness. Opportunity. Pick Two."". gapingvoid. Retrieved on 2006-02-16.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Clay Shirky

• Clay Shirky's homepage
• Clay Shirky's del.icio.us bookmarks
• Clay Shirky’s writings on the O'Reilly Network
• Clay Shirky: Ontology is Overrated
• Socially Intelligent Computing A Dialogue with Daniel Goleman[2]

Video & Audio

• 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.
• (2008-04-16). Futures of the Internet [Flash,mp4,RealVideo,3gp,mp3]. Internet Society - NY Chapter. Retrieved on 2008-04-27. - Colloquium @ NYU.
• Institutions vs. collaboration, July 2005 at TED (conference)
• Clay Shirky at Web 2.0 Expo SF 2008

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