Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky
Shirky on the Folksonomy panel at the 2005 O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego, California.
Born	1964 (age 52–53) Columbia, Missouri, U.S.
Occupation	Writer, consultant, lecturer

Clay Shirky (born 1964) is an American writer, consultant and teacher on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies and journalism.

He has a joint appointment at New York University (NYU) as a Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and Assistant Arts Professor in the New Media focused graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). His courses address, among other things, the interrelated effects of the topology of social networks and technological networks, how our networks shape culture and vice versa.

After graduating from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in fine art in 1986, he moved to New York. In the 1990s he founded the Hard Place Theater, a theatre company that produced non-fiction theater using only found materials such as government documents, transcripts and cultural records. and also worked as a lighting designer for other theater and dance companies, including the Wooster Group, Elevator Repair Service and Dana Reitz. During this time, Shirky was vice-president of the New York chapter of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and wrote technology guides for Ziff Davis. He appeared as an expert witness on cyberculture in Shea v. Reno, a case cited in the U. S. Supreme Court's decision to strike down the Communications Decency Act in 1996.