Clay Shirky: Why SOPA is a bad idea
What does a bill like PIPA/SOPA mean to our shareable world? At the TED offices, Clay Shirky delivers a proper manifesto -- a call to defend our freedom to create, discuss, link and share, rather than passively consume.
Clay Shirky: Institutions vs. collaboration
In this prescient 2005 talk, Clay Shirky shows how closed groups and companies will give way to looser networks where small contributors have big roles and fluid cooperation replaces rigid planning.
Clay Shirky: How cognitive surplus will change the world
Clay Shirky looks at "cognitive surplus" -- the shared, online work we do with our spare brain cycles. While we're busy editing Wikipedia, posting to Ushahidi (and yes, making LOLcats), we're building a better, more cooperative world.
Clay Shirky: How social media can make history
While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics.
Clay Shirky: How the Internet will (one day) transform government
The open-source world has learned to deal with a flood of new, oftentimes divergent, ideas using hosting services like GitHub -- so why can’t governments? In this rousing talk Clay Shirky shows how democracies can take a lesson from the Internet, to be not just transparent but also to draw on the knowledge of all their citizens.
Clay Shirky: The potential US TikTok ban — and what's at stake
The clock is ticking on social media giant TikTok, which faces a nationwide ban in the United States unless its parent company, ByteDance, sells it by January 19. Social media theorist Clay Shirky unpacks why the US is trying to ban TikTok, what it means for the app's users and creators and the implications for national security, freedom of spee...
JP Rangaswami: Information is food
How do we consume data? At TED@SXSWi, technologist JP Rangaswami muses on our relationship to information, and offers a surprising and sharp insight: we treat it like food.
Katherine Fulton: You are the future of philanthropy
In this uplifting talk, Katherine Fulton sketches the new future of philanthropy -- one where collaboration and innovation allow regular people to do big things, even when money is scarce. Giving five practical examples of crowd-driven philanthropy, she calls for a new generation of citizen leaders.
Steven Johnson: The Web as a city
Outside.in's Steven Johnson says the Web is like a city: built by many people, completely controlled by no one, intricately interconnected and yet functioning as many independent parts. While disaster strikes in one place, elsewhere, life goes on.