US Cover

My new book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, is coming out in February 2008, from Penguin Press. Here Comes Everybody is about what happens when people are given the tools to do things together, without needing traditional organizational structures. It's coming out first in the US and the UK, and can be pre-ordered at booksellers everywhere. (Later this year, there will be a Dutch, Portuguese, Chinese and Korean translations.) Along with the book, I am launching a Here Comes Everybody blog, designed to both chronicle and extend the themes of the book. I'm delighted to finally have to book out, and to be able to begin blogging about it. In addition, this site collects many of my older writings, from which many of the themes of the book arose. Thanks, as always, for reading, -clay

UK Cover

The most frequently read articles

Situated Software [Shirky.com, 3/04]
Watching my students build software form-fit to particular social situations.

The RIAA Succeeds Where the Cypherpunks Failed [Shirky.com, 12/03]
The RIAA's current legal strategy is driving broad public adoption of encryption, 10 years after it was first predicted

The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview [Shirky.com, 11/03]
The Semantic Web overestimates the value of deductive logic, and underestimates the difficulty of shared worldview

File Sharing Goes Social [Shirky.com, 10/03]
The RIAA is creating the environment for a generation of socially-bounded file sharing tools

Fame vs Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content [Shirky.com, 09/03]
Why micropayments don't work, and free content is an epochal change.

A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy [Shirky.com, 07/03]
Persistent patterns in long-lived online groups.

The FCC, Weblogs, and Inequality [Shirky.com, 06/03]
The FCC's vote on media concentration draws out a lesson about a media landscape: Diverse. Free. Equal. Pick two.

Grid supercomputing: The Next Push [Shirky.com, 05/03]
Why supercomputing on tap is less important than it seems bargains

Permanet, Nearlynet, and wireless data [Shirky.com, 03/03]
Why bottom-up (e.g. Wifi) works better than top-down (e.g. 3G)

Social Software and the Politics of Groups [Shirky.com, 03/03]
Software designed for groups encodes political bargains

Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality [Shirky.com, 02/03]
Diversity plus freedom of choice creates inequality.

The Music Industry and the Big Flip [Shirky.com, 01/03]
Using collaborative filtering in place of the A&R department

LazyWeb and RSS: Given Enough Eyeballs, Are Features Shallow Too? [O'Reilly, 01/03]
Can distributed bug fixing methods be applied to creating features?

Customer-owned Networks: ZapMail and the Telecommunications Industry [Shirky.com, 01/03]
WiFi and VoIP mean that the telecos significant competitors are its customers.

In-room Chat as a social tool [O'Reilly, 12/02]
An experiment running a meeting side-by-side with an in-room chat channel.

DNA, P2P, and Privacy [Shirky.com, 11/02]
DNA as the ideal primary key for distributed databases.

Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing [Shirky.com, 10/02]
Weblogs are so efficient that they destroy the financial value of publishing.

Broadcast Institutions, Community Values [Shirky.com, 09/02]
The skills required to do online media well can actually damage online community.

Half the World [Shirky.com, 06/02]
An investigation of the phrase “Half the world has never made a phone call.”

- Communities, Audiences, and Scale [04/02] Audiences scale. Communities don't
- Help, the Price of Information Has Fallen and It Can’t Get Up [04/97] Why content is free on the Web.

DNA, P2P, and Privacy [Shirky.com, 11/02]
DNA as the ideal primary key for distributed databases.

Hailstorm: Open Web Services Controlled by Microsoft [O'Reilly, 05/01]
Microsoft's Hailstorm Strategy

Security and Decentralization [Biz2, 05/01]
Network Security will be a joke until IT departments recognize

The Java Renaissance [Biz2, 06/01]
Java Returns to the PC, Courtesy P2P

P2P Backlash [O'Reilly, 04/01]
The P2P meme hits a rough patch

Interoperability, Not Standards [O'Reilly, 04/01]
Standardization of P2P is Premature

Peak Performance Pricing [Biz2, 02/01]
Digital Networks and Per-Unit Costs

P2P Smuggled In Under Cover of Darkness [O'Reilly, 02/01]
Workers smuggle P2P in today like they smuggled in PCs 20 years ago

The Parable of Umbrellas and Taxicabs [O'Reilly, 01/01]
Different kinds of resources in P2P systems

The Case Against Micropayments [O'Reilly, 01/01]
Why Micropayments Won't Work, Ever.

Peers not Pareto [O'Reilly, 12/00]
And economic argument about P2P systems and Pareto optimality

In Praise of Freeloading [O'Reilly, 12/00]
Why freeloading in P2P systems is not the problem people think it is.

The Napster-BMG Deal [Feed, 10/00]
The Era of Subscription Music Begins

The End of Per-Unit Pricing (????) [Biz2, 10/00]
What Napster et al portend for per unit pricing.

PCs are the Dark Matter of the Internet [Biz2, 10/00]
Peer-to-peer relies on the PC's latent power

The DNS System is Coming Apart At the Seams [Biz2, 10/00]
Peer-to-peer bypasses the DNS system

The Music Industry Will Miss Napster [WSJ, 07/00]
If the industry kills Napster, it will lose its best potential partner

Napster and the Death of the Album Format [NYT, 07/00]
Napster had made the song, not the album, the unit of musical selection.

Napster and "Content at the Edges" [Biz2.0, 04/00]
Napster is turning the internet inside out.

Napster and "User as Media Outlet" [Biz2.0, 06/00]
Napster turns the user from a media consumer into a media provider.

Napster and music distribution [Biz2.0, 04/00]
Napster and the 55 mph speed limit.

The fusing of desktops and servers [FEED, 01/00]
Windows2000 vs. Linux in a "Content at the Edges" Internet.

The Real Wireless Innovators [Biz2, 04/01]
What the telcos and handset manufacturers don’t know about usability.

Wireless Auction Follies [Biz2.0, 11/00]
The likely effect of massive overpaying at wireless auctions

Its the Communication, Stupid. [Biz2.0, 07/00]
How the wireless world missed the boat on e-mail

WAP's Closed Door Approach [Biz2.0, 05/00]
WAP's Philosophical Characteristics

WAP (Wireless Access Protocol) and Intellectual Property [FEED, 01/00]
WAP is on a collision course with the Web as it exists today.

Half the World [Shirky.com, 06/02]
An investigation of the phrase “Half the world has never made a phone call.”

AOL, Time-Warner, and European Media [Times of London, 01/00]
The AOL Time-Warner merger from a British angle.

1999: The Year the World Wide Web Went World Wide [SAR, 12/99]
As of 1999, American internet users are in the minority. What now?

Language, The Internet, and the Next Century [ACM, 12/99]
Human language is the next great challenge for the world's networks.

The WTO and the Seattle Protests [FEED, 11/99]
How the Seattle protests may end up strengthening the WTO.

EasyEverything and Internet Use in Europe [SAR, 10/99]
What a cyber-cafe on steroids says about European Internet adoption.

Culture is Just Another Word for "Arbitrage Opportunity" [FEED, 09/99]
The threat cross-border ecommerce presents to national culture.

The Internet and the Size of Government [FEED, 08/99]
Challenges to governmental control.

Internet Use and National Identity [FEED, 07/99]
The effects of Internet adoption on national culture.

Language Networks [FEED, 07/99]
On the net, two countries border each other only if they share a language.

Citizens and Customers [FEED, 06/99]
National Identity vs. Economic Identity.

Fame vs Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content [Shirky.com, 09/03]
Why micropayments don't work, and free content is an epochal change.

Customer-owned Networks: ZapMail and the Telecommunications Industry [Shirky.com, 01/03]
WiFi and VoIP mean that the telecos significant competitors are its customers.

Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing [Shirky.com, 10/02]
Weblogs are so efficient that they destroy the financial value of publishing.

Half the World [Shirky.com, 06/02]
An investigation of the phrase “Half the world has never made a phone call.”

The Wal-Mart Future [Biz2, 01/01]
You can't pursue an inflationary path to a deflationary ideal.

AOL’s Brilliant Climbdown [FEED, 01/00]
What the AOL Time-Warner Merger Says about the Media Business

The Abuse of Intellectual Property Law [FEED, 12/99]
How lawsuits are stifling innovation.

Pretend vs. Real Economy [FEED, 06/99]
The difference between the stock market and the economy.

Free PC Business Models [FEED, 03/99]
The Economics of the "Free PC" movement.

Why Smart Agents Are A Dumb Idea [ACM, 6/99]
“Smart Agents” are the wrong solution to the problem of info-liquidity.

The Divide by Zero Era: The Arrival of the Free Computer [ACM, 12/98]
Radical shifts in computer economics.

Help, the Price of Information Has Fallen and It Can't Get Up [ACM, 04/97]
Why content is free on the Web.

Who Are You Paying When You're Paying Attention? [ACM, 06/99]
Converting attention to cash.

IN-room Chat as a social tool [O'Reilly, 12/02]
An experiment running a meeting side-by-side with an in-room chat channel

Broadcast Institutions, Community Values [Shirky.com, 09/02]
The skills required to do online media well can actually damage online community.

Social Software and the Politics of Groups [Shirky.com, 03/03]
Software designed for groups encodes political bargains

Domain Names: Memorable, Global, Non-political? [Shirky.com, 05/02]
Semantics, and therefore legal issues, are an inevitable part of naming

Communities, Audiences, and Scale [Shirky.com, 04/02]
Audiences scale. Communities don’t

Resist the lure of simplified history [Biz2.0, 09/00]
Where we’ve been, and where we’re going.

The Toughest Virus of All [Biz2, 07/00]
Why viral marketing can never be a general purpose tool.

Internet World ’00: A View From the Floor [SAR, 11/99]
What the ’00 Internet World says about the state of the industry.

RIP, the Consumer, 1900-1999 [SAR, 05/00]
Mass media is a historical anomoly

Time-Warner and ILOVEYOU [FEED, 05/00]
Corporate and idividual control of media outlets

We’ve (Still) Got a Long Way to Go [Biz2.0, 06/00]
The Library of Congress Underestimates the Internet

Ford, Subsidized Computers, and Free Speech [FEED, 01/00]
The 1st Amendment protects public space. What happens on the commercial internet?

The Cable Internet Industry is an Over-hyped Meltdown Waiting to Happen [Biz 2.0, 11/99]
The Cable Internet industry is ignoring the lessons of the Web’sgrowth.

ATT and Cable Internet Access [FEED, 11/99]
ATT's attempt to buy itself a new monopoly.

An Open Letter to Microsoft [SAR, 09/99]
Software usability and what it means to be a media company.

An Open Letter to Jakob Nielsen [ACM, 06/99]
An argument against design standards on the web.

Internet World '99: A View From the Floor [SAR, 11/99]
What the ’99 Internet World says about the state of the industry.

How Television Ratings Portend the Death of Mass Media [FEED, 10/99]
Television is becoming more like the Web.

Web Traffic and TV Ratings. [FEED, 04/99]
Big web sites are now as widely seen as any TV series.

Kasparov vs. The World [FEED, 10/99]
What the Kasparov community chess match tells us about community.

The Internet and Hit-driven Industries [SAR, 07/99]
Why Hollywood is really going to hate the Web.

Social Computing in Student Populations [self-published, 02/99]
What college students can tell us about Internet use.

Don’t Believe the Hype [ACM, 10/96]
User preference and product design.

Cyberporn!!! (So What???) [Urban Desires, 03/96]
First Amendment issues and the regulation of pornography on the net.

XML: No Magic Problem Solver [Biz2.0, 09/00]
XML can solve technological problems, but not business problems.

Darwin, Linux, and Adaptive Radiation [Biz2.0, 10/00]
The spread of Linux to multiple devices.

The fusing of desktops and servers [FEED, 01/00]
Windows2000 vs. Linux in a “Content at the Edges” Internet.

Open Source and Quake [FEED, 01/00]
Games and the possibility of going Open Source after the fact.

Why Stricter Software Patents End Up Benefitting Open Source [FEED, 08/99]
Why commercial software controls will backfire.

Sun's Quasi-Open Source model [FEED, 10/99]
Sun Microsytems's misunderstanding of Open Source

Time to Open Source the Human Genome [FEED, 09/99]
Patent law and human genetics.

View Source... Lessons from the Web's Rapid Development [ACM, 04/98]
The Web considered as a massive Open Source project.

In Praise of Evolvable Systems [ACM, 03/98]
Central Planning vs. Evolution

Playfulness in 3D Spaces [ACM, 03/98]
Why Quake is better than VRML, and what it means for software design.

The Icarus Effect [ACM, 11/97]
Network traffic is growing faster than chip speed.

The “Interest Horizon” of Open Source [self-published, 02/99]
The economic limits of Open Source

Short Takes on Linux. [self-published, 10/98]
Brief theses about Linux and Open Source development.

Slashdot Interview [Slashdot, 05/01]
Q&A about the net, media and economics on slashdot

WAP and International Net Adoption [ebusinessforum, 06/00]
The Economist Intelligence Unit’s ebusinessforum

Interview with Red Herring magazine [MediaLife.com, 03/00]
Social computing, ASPs, and broadband.

Interview with Media Life magazine [MediaLife.com, 11/99]
Where the Web is going, as it relates to media and advertising.

Cyberporn Update [Urban Desires, 10/96]
My testimony against the Communications Decency Act.