Clay Shirky: Technology, Communication and Society Consultant

Clay Shirky is a leading consultant, professor and author on the social and economic effects of internet technologies. He believes emerging technologies enabling loose collaboration will change the way our society works.

Clay Shirky's consulting focuses on the rising usefulness of decentralised technologies such as peer-to-peer, wireless networks, social software and open-source development. New technologies are enabling new kinds of cooperative structures to flourish as a way of getting things done in business, science, the arts and elsewhere. These are an alternative to centralised and institutional structures, which he sees as self-limiting. In his writings and speeches, Shirky has argued that "a group is its own worst enemy."

Shirky is an adjunct professor in New York University's graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program, where he teaches a course named 'Social Weather'. Business clients have included Nokia, the Library of Congress and the BBC.

Future Fundamentals - Communication

"Communication has always been one to one or one to many. Now it is many to many. We are in the midst of a revolution and we don’t even realise it."

The communications revolution has given millions of people a wider and more detailed understanding of the world. As a result of technology, ordinary people can access information that formerly was available only to elites and nation-states. Social practices are now reshaping technology rather than the other way around.

Mobile phone penetration vastly exceeds Internet usage, with an estimated 3 billion mobile phones worldwide. In the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and South/Southeast Asia, the mobile is not a replacement for existing landline technology but a means of a personal communications channel for the first time.

Soon your mobile phone will be able to order you a pizza in another country in another language due to inbuilt universal translators. International boundaries that may have existed before will no longer prevent certain communication from being possible.

An open world of communication for the future lies ahead – which we are all making happen.

Clay Shirky is providing expert insight on Communications through a print advertorial, TV commercial and podcast.