"A real world group will have some way of handling the problem, usually through moral suasion or the threat of lost reputation... but the solution feels wrong, in Web School terms, because those web applications can't assume there is a tacit reputation system. By relying on existing social fabric, situated software is guaranteed not to work at the scale Web School apps do, but for the same reason, it can work in ways Web School software can't."

#ClayShirky, 2004

https://web.archive.org/web/20040411202042/http://www.shirky.com/writings/situated_software.html

"We've been killing conversations about software with "That won't scale" for so long we've forgotten that scaling problems aren't inherently fatal. The N-squared problem is only a problem if N is large, and in social situations, N is usually not large. A reading group works better with 5 members than 15; a seminar works better with 15 than 25, much less 50, and so on."

#ClayShirky, 2004

https://web.archive.org/web/20040411202042/http://www.shirky.com/writings/situated_software.html

"We've always had a tension between enterprise design practices and a 'small pieces, loosely joined' way of making software... The advantages to the latter are in part described in Worse is Better and The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Situated software is in the small pieces category, with the following additional characteristic -- it is designed for use by a specific social group, rather than for a generic set of 'users'."

#ClayShirky, 2004

https://web.archive.org/web/20040411202042/http://www.shirky.com/writings/situated_software.html

#UX #HumanExperience #HX

#20yrsago #Mexico sells out its future by extending copyright https://web.archive.org/web/20030313230051/https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/blog/archives/2003_03.shtml

#20yrsago Google’s #SergeyBrin at #PCForum https://craphound.com/google.html

#20yrsago #SocialSoftware panel at #PCForum https://craphound.com/socialsoftware.html

#15yrsago #Walmart infection-spread timelapse video https://web.archive.org/web/20080323083145/http://blog.kiwitobes.com/?p=51

#15yrsago #ClayShirky’s Harvard talk: Here Comes Everybody https://web.archive.org/web/20161226034209/http://wilkins.law.harvard.edu/events/Misc/2008-02-28_shirky/2008-02-28_shirky320web.mp4

4/

#15yrsago Record companies don’t share money extorted from file-sharing fans with artists https://nypost.com/2008/02/27/infringement/

#15yrsago Shrine to bragging, deadly Internet “#MallNinja” https://lonelymachines.org/mall-ninjas/

#15yrsago #ClayShirky’s masterpiece: Here Comes Everybody https://memex.craphound.com/2008/02/28/clay-shirkys-masterpiece-here-comes-everybody/

#10yrsago Bestiary of unimportant envelopes that look important https://www.evilmadscientist.com/2013/envelopes/

5/

Even Clay Shirky can't keep a blog up.

"Shirky.com is gone"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31038660

#ClayShirky #Blogs #Blogging #Complexity #Startups #Shutdowns #Failure

Work / capitalism expands to fill all available cognitive surplus.

That's the problem with Clay Shirky's premise.

See also David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_Surplus

#CognitiveSurplus #ClayShirky #DavidGraeber #ParkinsonsLaw