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What Motivates Us To Collaborate?

Part 3 of the TED Radio Hour episode Why We Collaborate.

About Clay Shirky's TEDTalk

Social media guru Clay Shirky looks at "cognitive surplus" — the shared, online work we do with our spare brain cycles. While we're busy contributing to the web in our small ways, we're building a better, more cooperative world.

About Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky's work focuses on the rising usefulness of networks — using decentralized technologies such as peer-to-peer sharing, wireless, software for social creation, and open-source development. New technologies are enabling new kinds of cooperative structures to flourish as a way of getting things done in all fields as an alternative to centralized and institutional structures, which he sees as limiting.

Shirky is an adjunct professor in New York Universityʼs graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program. He's the author of Here Comes Everybody and Cognitive Surplus: Creativity And Generosity In A Connected Age.

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NPR/TED Staff