Clay Shirky

A writer on the internet, Napster, P2P, WAP and other cyber-communication issues. Some articles are:

The Case Against Micropayments
Peers not Pareto
In Praise of Evolvable Systems -- "HTTP and HTML are the Whoopee Cushion and Joy Buzzer of Internet protocols, only comprehensible as elaborate practical jokes. For anyone who has tried to accomplish anything serious on the Web, it's pretty obvious that of the various implementations of a worldwide hypertext protocol, we have the worst one possible. Except, of course, for all the others. http://www.shirky.com/OpenSource/evolve.html
A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy -- Explains common group (mis)behaviors and suggests minimal solutions to avoid them. Wiki readers will wonder if wiki is somehow exempt or if the wiki community has in fact created the minimal mechanisms on their own (a possibility he acknowledges). http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html
- See AgroupIsItsOwnWorstEnemy to decide whether you would like to read it.
The difference between communities and audiences. Audiences scale, communities don't. http://shirky.com/writings/community_scale.html

Videos by topics

Lots of his views can be seen at Corante web site.