Clay Shirky telling it like it is. You need to listen to this guy

Clay Shirky is one of those guys that you might never have heard of before, but will never forget once you have heard him speak.

For the uninitiated, Clay is one of the world’s most respected commentators on the societal changes that are taking place on the web today. He is a writer, consultant and teacher on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies NYU and author of “Here Comes Everybody”. He also speaks at TED, one video of which is below.

Clay approaches social media from a background of science which helps him make one of the most compelling cases for social media you will ever hear.

In fact, one of my favourite quotes from Clay is this:

“A revolution doesn’t happen when a society adopts new tools. It happens when society adopts new behaviours…”

In the video, he also touches on something also very interesting, the idea that society doesn’t change its habits until the technology becomes boring enough to take for granted – which is why the Obama campaign did so well. The barriers to entry to getting people to use MMS, Video and the Web are now so low that everyday people can genuinely make a noise online.

Some interesting lessons here: