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Clay Shirky

Expert on New Technology & Social Media, & How They Shape Culture; Professor & Distinguished Writer in Residence, NYU

Expert on New Technology & Social Media, & How They Shape Culture; Professor & Distinguished Writer in Residence, NYU

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New York, NY, USA
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Clay Shirky Biography

Clay Shirky is today's leading voice on the social and economic impact of internet technologies. Considered one of the finest thinkers on the Internet revolution, Shirky provides an insightful and optimistic view of networks, social software and technology's effects on society. Writing extensively about the Internet since 1996, he is the author of the best-selling "Here Comes Everybody" (Penguin Books, 2009) and "Cognitive Surplus" (Penguin Press, 2010). In "Here Comes Everybody" - selected by Guardian as one of the 100 greatest non-fiction books of all time - Shirky explores how organizations and industries are being upended by open networks, collaboration, and user appropriation of content production and dissemination. "Cognitive Surplus" reveals how new technology is changing us from consumers to collaborators, unleashing a torrent of creative production that will transform our world.

Shirky holds a joint appointment at New York University (NYU) as an Associate Arts Professor at the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) and Distinguished Writer in Residence in the Journalism Department. He is also a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and was the Edward R. Murrow Visiting Lecturer at Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy in 2010.

Over the years, he has had regular columns in Business 2.0 and FEED, among other publications, and his writings have appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Wired, Computerworld and Foreign Affairs. In addition to writing, Shirky has a consulting practice 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 Web.

Prior to his appointment at NYU, Shirky was a partner at the Accelerator Group, an international investment company. Shirky was the original Professor of New Media in the Media Studies department at Hunter College, where he created the department’s first undergraduate and graduate offerings in new media and helped design the current MFA in Integrated Media Arts program.

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Speaker profile last updated by AAE Talent Team on 09/11/2024.

Clay Shirky Speaking Topics

  • Digital Might vs Digital Rights

    A harbinger of how the media world is contending with the power of digital manipulation and collaboration may well be seen in the esoteric world of anime, the Japanese animated movies with hardcore fans in the US and Europe. Viewers now translate, sub-title and annotate these films for Western audiences, and curiously: the writers arent paid, no one asked them to do it, and they dont belong to any organization. Clay paints a picture of a future disintermediated media business, where people provision, adapt and reuse the product for themselves. These dislocations will reverberate and reshape the business for many years to come, he contends, with one certainty: the efforts of the entertainment industry to make it harder to find and use its products perversely motivate the digital denizens to upturn these barriers and create out-of-system alternatives.

  • Failure for (Near) Free

    In the emerging world of web-based collaboration and experimentation, organizations are learning that loosely coordinated groups may be the best way to work on large, complicated undertakings. The open source software industry is the most visible demonstration of this phenomenon, but collaborative networks are changing the face of the media and entertainment, outsourcing, and all technology-based industries. Clay Shirky, a pioneering researcher on collaborative tools, shows how these networks have significant and irreversible advantages over traditional business organizations, and what companies can do to capitalize on them e.g. by lowering to (near) zero the cost of project failure.

  • Here Comes Everybody

    Ten years ago, the big realization was a perceptual migration from atoms to bits, from the world of the physical to the world of information. This idea, best expounded by Nicholas Negroponte in Being Digital, alerted the world to the shift to the information economy. Now, another kind of digital revolution is taking hold. Networked tools are allowing groups to form and collaborate without any of the traditional friction that comes from managing the efforts of multitudes. The source of this revolution is not the computer but the connections between them, as our social networks fuse with our technological ones. Compared to the shift to digital information, this change is more painful for some people to embrace, even to contemplate, because it challenges deeply held assumptions about how society does or should work. Were witnessing nothing less than the migration from an information economy based on the work of the individual mind to new forms of collective intelligence and collective effort, and it represents, for good or for bad, a fundamental change in the way our society all modern societies, in fact is structured. Clay illustrates these fundamental forces at work, and how they will change the worlds organizations and, ultimately, ourselves.

  • Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age

    In this presentation, Clay Shirky forecasts the thrilling changes we will all enjoy as new digital technology puts our untapped resources of talent and goodwill to use at last.

    Since Americans were suburbanized and educated by the postwar boom, we’ve had a surfeit of intellect, energy, and time—what Shirky calls a “cognitive surplus.” But this abundance had little impact on the common good because television consumed the lion’s share of it. Now, for the first time, people are embracing new media that allows us to pool our efforts at vanishingly low cost. The results of this aggregated effort range from mind expanding—reference tools like Wikipedia—to lifesaving—like Ushahidi.com, which has allowed Kenyans to report on acts of violence in real time.

    Shirky charts the vast effects that our cognitive surplus—aided by new technologies—will have on twenty-first-century society and how we can best exploit those effects. For instance, he acknowledges that new tech brings greater freedom to publish and hence lower quality on average. But it also allows for the sort of experimentation that produces our greatest innovations. Shirky also assesses the transformative impact of online culture, which is by definition more transparent than traditional management structures.

Clay Shirky Videos

  • Clay Shirky: Institutions vs. collaboration
    http://www.ted.com In this prescient 2005 talk, Clay Shirky shows how closed groups and companies will give way to looser networks where small...
  • Jigsaw Presents: Clay Shirky: "Little Rice" | Talks at Google
  • Spin Time TV - Webisode 1 - Clay Shirky - Debates Then and Now ...

Clay Shirky Books

  • Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age
    Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age
  • Cognitive Surplus: How Technology Makes Consumers into Collaborators
    Cognitive Surplus: How Technology Makes Consumers into Collaborators

FAQs on booking Clay Shirky

  • How do I book Clay Shirky to speak at my event?

    Our experienced booking agents have successfully helped clients around the world secure speakers like Clay Shirky for speaking engagements, personal appearances, product endorsements, or corporate entertainment since 2002. Click the Check Availability button above and complete the form on this page to check availability for Clay Shirky, or call our office at 1.800.698.2536 to discuss your upcoming event. One of our experienced agents will be happy to help you get speaking fee information and check availability for Clay Shirky or any other speaker of your choice.
  • What are the speaker fees for Clay Shirky

    Speaking fees for Clay Shirky, or any other speakers and celebrities, are determined based on a number of factors and may change without notice. The estimated fees to book Clay Shirky are for live events and for virtual events. For the most current speaking fee to hire Clay Shirky, click the Check Availability button above and complete the form on this page, or call our office at 1.800.698.2536 to speak directly with an experienced booking agent.
  • What topics does Clay Shirky speak about?

  • Where does Clay Shirky travel from?

    Clay Shirky generally travels from New York, NY, USA, but can be booked for private corporate events, personal appearances, keynote speeches, or other performances. For more details, please contact an AAE Booking agent.
  • Who is Clay Shirky’s agent?

    AAE Speakers Bureau has successfully booked keynote speakers like Clay Shirky for clients worldwide since 2002. As a full-service speaker booking agency, we have access to virtually any speaker or celebrity in the world. Our agents are happy and able to submit an offer to the speaker or celebrity of your choice, letting you benefit from our reputation and long-standing relationships in the industry. Please click the Check Availability button above and complete the form on this page including the details of your event, or call our office at 1.800.698.2536, and one of our agents will assist you to book Clay Shirky for your next private or corporate function.
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    AAE Speakers Bureau is a full-service speaker booking agency, meaning we can completely manage the speaker’s or celebrity’s engagement with your organization from the time of booking your speaker through the event’s completion. We provide all of the services you need to host Clay Shirky or any other speaker of your choice, including offer negotiation, contractual assistance, accounting and billing, and event speaker travel and logistics services. When you book a speaker with us, we manage the process of hosting a speaker for you as an extension of your team. Our goal is to give our clients peace of mind and a best-in-class service experience when booking a speaker with us.
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    If you’re looking for the best, unbiased speaker recommendations, paired with a top-notch customer service experience, you’re in the right place. At AAE Speakers Bureau, we exclusively represent the interests of our clients - professional organizations, companies, universities, and associations. We intentionally do not represent the speakers we feature or book. That is so we can present our clients with the broadest and best performing set of speaker options in the market today, and we can make these recommendations without any obligation to promote a specific speaker over another. This is why when our agents suggest a speaker for your event, you can be assured that they are of the highest quality with a history of proven success with our other clients.

Clay Shirky is a keynote speaker and industry expert who speaks on a wide range of topics such as Digital Might vs Digital Rights, Failure for (Near) Free, Here Comes Everybody and Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. The estimated speaking fee range to book Clay Shirky for your event is $30,000 - $50,000. Clay Shirky generally travels from New York, NY, USA and can be booked for (private) corporate events, personal appearances, keynote speeches, or other performances. Similar motivational celebrity speakers are Jimmy Wales, John Legend, Ray Kurzweil, Peter Diamandis and Jeremy Rifkin. Contact All American Speakers for ratings, reviews, videos and information on scheduling Clay Shirky for an upcoming live or virtual event.

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