Clay Shirky (edit name/settings)

Clay Shirky is a writer, educator, and consultant on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. He is an adjunct professor at New York University (NYU) in their graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program, where he teaches courses on the interrelationships of social and technological networks, particularly how they shape culture and vice-versa. He consults to a variety of organizations on network technologies, and is an acknowledged expert on collaboration tools, social networks, peer-to-peer sharing, collaborative filtering, and Open Source development. Clay has spoken and written extensively on the Internet since 1996, with regular columns in Business 2.0, FEED, OpenP2P.com and his own shirky.com blogsite. He has appeared in The New York Times, Time, The Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, and others. In his highly acclaimed book, "Here Comes Everybody", Clay explored how organizations and industries are being upended by open networks, collaboration, and user appropriation of content production and dissemination. His recent book, "Cognitive Surplus," reveals how new technology is changing us from consumers to collaborators, unleashing a torrent of creative production that will transform our world.
 
FOCUS AREAS
Current research agenda?

Clay thinks about how groups get things done, and about the ways new communications tools and new social structures are allowing groups to work together productively without needing formal coordination. This presents considerable opportunities for both for-profit and non-profit organizations, who can harness group effort in this way (as with IBM capitalizing on the Open Source movement). It also presents considerable challenges, as self-organizing groups of customers can also become formidable competitors, as with the Wikipedia or file sharing networks.

http://monitortalent.com/talent/Clay-Shirky-Profile.html