[cc-community] 10k great Free songs (was Re: Rcrd Lbl to offer CC and Free as in Beer Music)

Greg London email at greglondon.com
Tue Nov 20 22:31:33 EST 2007


excerpt from a speech given by Clay Shirky about Social Software at the
O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference in Santa Clara on April 24, 2003

http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html

The downside of going for size and scale above all else is that the dense,
interconnected pattern that drives group conversation and collaboration
isn't supportable at any large scale. Less is different -- small groups of
people can engage in kinds of interaction that large groups can't. And so
we blew past that interesting scale of small groups. Larger than a dozen,
smaller than a few hundred, where people can actually have these
conversational forms that can't be supported when you're talking about
tens of thousands or millions of users, at least in a single group.

(/snip)

Above a certain size, he says the only communication possible is
"broadcast", one-way communication. This is the radio station for music or
a critic or some third party such as that. You want two-way communication,
collaboration, and so on, you need smaller groups having conversations.


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