Page Details:
Why We Need the New News Environment to be Chaotic « Clay Shirky
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2011/07/we-need-the-new-news-environment-to-be-chaotic/Having one kind of institution do most of the reporting for most communities in the US seemed like a great idea right up until it seemed like a single point of failure. As that failure spreads, the news ecosystem isn’t just getting more chaotic, we need it to be more chaotic, because we need multiple competing approaches. It isn’t newspapers we should be worrying about, but news, and there are many more ways of getting and reporting the news that we haven’t tried than that we have
Tags: via:packrati.us, news, shirky, media, newspapers, 104, 326, clay, clayshirky, complexity Saved by: admin
A Speculative Post on the Idea of Algorithmic Authority « Clay Shirky
Algorithmic authority is the decision to regard as authoritative an unmanaged process of extracting value from diverse, untrustworthy sources without a human standing beside the result. This model has 3 critical characteristics. 1st, it takes material from multiple sources not universally vetted for their trustworthiness, and combines them in a way that doesn’t rely on a human to sign off on the results. This is how Google’s PageRank algorithm works, how Twitscoop’s zeitgeist measurement works, how Wikipedia’s post hoc peer review works. 2nd it produces good results, and people come to trust it as a valuable information tool, but not yet anything more. 3rd is when people become aware of the trust of others: “I use Wikipedia all the time, and other members of my group do as well” Once everyone in the group has this realization, checking Wikipedia is tantamount to answering the kind of questions Wikipedia purports to answer, for that group. This is the transition to algorithmic authority
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/11/a-speculative-post-on-the-idea-of-algorithmic-authority/
Tags: authority, shirky, algorithmic, community, clayshirky, trust, algorithm, identity, relevance, research Saved by: admin
Algorithmic authority is the decision to regard as authoritative an unmanaged process of extracting value from diverse, untrustworthy sources without a human standing beside the result. This model has 3 critical characteristics. 1st, it takes material from multiple sources not universally vetted for their trustworthiness, and combines them in a way that doesn’t rely on a human to sign off on the results. This is how Google’s PageRank algorithm works, how Twitscoop’s zeitgeist measurement works, how Wikipedia’s post hoc peer review works. 2nd it produces good results, and people come to trust it as a valuable information tool, but not yet anything more. 3rd is when people become aware of the trust of others: “I use Wikipedia all the time, and other members of my group do as well” Once everyone in the group has this realization, checking Wikipedia is tantamount to answering the kind of questions Wikipedia purports to answer, for that group. This is the transition to algorithmic authority
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/11/a-speculative-post-on-the-idea-of-algorithmic-authority/
Tags: authority, shirky, algorithmic, community, clayshirky, trust, algorithm, identity, relevance, research Saved by: admin
A Rant About Women « Clay Shirky
it would be good if more women see interesting opportunities that they might not be qualified for, opportunities which they might in fact fuck up if they try to take them on, and then try to take them on. It would be good if more women got in the habit of raising their hands and saying “I can do that. Sign me up. My work is awesome,” no matter how many people that behavior upsets.
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/01/a-rant-about-women/
Tags: business, women, gender, career, psychology, culture, entrepreneurship, advice, inspiration, ego Saved by: admin
it would be good if more women see interesting opportunities that they might not be qualified for, opportunities which they might in fact fuck up if they try to take them on, and then try to take them on. It would be good if more women got in the habit of raising their hands and saying “I can do that. Sign me up. My work is awesome,” no matter how many people that behavior upsets.
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/01/a-rant-about-women/
Tags: business, women, gender, career, psychology, culture, entrepreneurship, advice, inspiration, ego Saved by: admin
The Collapse of Complex Business Models « Clay Shirky
"When societies fail to respond to reduced circumstances through orderly downsizing, it isn’t because they don’t want to, it’s because they can’t … the whole edifice becomes a huge, interlocking system not readily amenable to change. … even … moderate adjustments … tend to be resisted, because any simplification discomfits elites. When the value of complexity turns negative, a society plagued by an inability to react remains as complex as ever, right up to the moment where it becomes suddenly and dramatically simpler … the moment of collapse. Collapse is simply the last remaining method of simplification." "“Web users will have to pay for what they watch and use, or else we will have to stop making content in the costly and complex way we have grown accustomed to making it. And we don’t know how to do that.”" "people who figure out how to work simply in the present, rather than the people who mastered the complexities of the past … get to say what happens in the future"
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/04/the-collapse-of-complex-business-models/
Tags: business, media, economics, complexity, history, shirky, innovation, change, strategy, collapse Saved by: admin
"When societies fail to respond to reduced circumstances through orderly downsizing, it isn’t because they don’t want to, it’s because they can’t … the whole edifice becomes a huge, interlocking system not readily amenable to change. … even … moderate adjustments … tend to be resisted, because any simplification discomfits elites. When the value of complexity turns negative, a society plagued by an inability to react remains as complex as ever, right up to the moment where it becomes suddenly and dramatically simpler … the moment of collapse. Collapse is simply the last remaining method of simplification." "“Web users will have to pay for what they watch and use, or else we will have to stop making content in the costly and complex way we have grown accustomed to making it. And we don’t know how to do that.”" "people who figure out how to work simply in the present, rather than the people who mastered the complexities of the past … get to say what happens in the future"
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/04/the-collapse-of-complex-business-models/
Tags: business, media, economics, complexity, history, shirky, innovation, change, strategy, collapse Saved by: admin
The Times’ Paywall and Newsletter Economics « Clay Shirky
"One way to think of this transition is that online, the Times has stopped being a newspaper, in the sense of a generally available and omnibus account of the news of the day, broadly read in the community. Instead, it is becoming a newsletter, an outlet supported by, and speaking to, a specific and relatively coherent and compact audience. (In this case, the Times is becoming the online newsletter of the Tories, the UK’s conservative political party, read much less widely than its paper counterpart.) Murdoch and News Corp, committed as they have been to extracting revenues from the paywall, still cannot execute in a way that does not change the nature of the organizations behind the wall. Rather than simply shifting relative subsidy from advertisers to users for an existing product, they are instead re-engineering the Times around the newsletter model, because the paywall creates newsletter economics."
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/11/the-times-paywall-and-newsletter-economics/
Tags: paywall, media, newspapers, journalism, economics, business, via:packrati.us, newspaper, shirky, news Saved by: admin
"One way to think of this transition is that online, the Times has stopped being a newspaper, in the sense of a generally available and omnibus account of the news of the day, broadly read in the community. Instead, it is becoming a newsletter, an outlet supported by, and speaking to, a specific and relatively coherent and compact audience. (In this case, the Times is becoming the online newsletter of the Tories, the UK’s conservative political party, read much less widely than its paper counterpart.) Murdoch and News Corp, committed as they have been to extracting revenues from the paywall, still cannot execute in a way that does not change the nature of the organizations behind the wall. Rather than simply shifting relative subsidy from advertisers to users for an existing product, they are instead re-engineering the Times around the newsletter model, because the paywall creates newsletter economics."
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/11/the-times-paywall-and-newsletter-economics/
Tags: paywall, media, newspapers, journalism, economics, business, via:packrati.us, newspaper, shirky, news Saved by: admin
Wikileaks and the Long Haul « Clay Shirky
Citizens of a functioning democracy must be able to know what the state is saying and doing in our name, to engage in what Pierre Rosanvallon calls “counter-democracy”*, the democracy of citizens distrusting rather than legitimizing the actions of the state. Wikileaks plainly improves those abilities. On the other hand, human systems can’t stand pure transparency. For negotiation to work, people’s stated positions have to change, but change is seen, almost universally, as weakness. People trying to come to consensus must be able to speak frankly, and to privately voice opinions they would publicly abjure, and may later abandon. # Here’s what I’m not conflicted about: When a government can’t get what it wants by working within the law, the right answer is not to work outside the law. The right answer is to accept that it can’t get what it wants. The Unites States is–or should be–subject to the rule of law, which makes the extra-judicial pursuit of Wikileaks especially nauseating.
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/12/wikileaks-and-the-long-haul/
Tags: wikileaks, politics, via:packrati.us, government, democracy, law, internet, clayshirky, transparency, shirky Saved by: admin
Citizens of a functioning democracy must be able to know what the state is saying and doing in our name, to engage in what Pierre Rosanvallon calls “counter-democracy”*, the democracy of citizens distrusting rather than legitimizing the actions of the state. Wikileaks plainly improves those abilities. On the other hand, human systems can’t stand pure transparency. For negotiation to work, people’s stated positions have to change, but change is seen, almost universally, as weakness. People trying to come to consensus must be able to speak frankly, and to privately voice opinions they would publicly abjure, and may later abandon. # Here’s what I’m not conflicted about: When a government can’t get what it wants by working within the law, the right answer is not to work outside the law. The right answer is to accept that it can’t get what it wants. The Unites States is–or should be–subject to the rule of law, which makes the extra-judicial pursuit of Wikileaks especially nauseating.
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/12/wikileaks-and-the-long-haul/
Tags: wikileaks, politics, via:packrati.us, government, democracy, law, internet, clayshirky, transparency, shirky Saved by: admin