“The basic capabilities of tools like Flickr reverse the old order of group activity, transforming 'gather, then share' into 'share, then gather'.”

“Information sharing produces shared awareness among the participants, and collaborative production relies on shared creation, but collective action creates shared responsibility, by tying the user's identity to the identity of the group.”

“Unlike sharing, where the group is mainly an aggregate of participants, cooperating creates group identity.”

“Tools that provide simple ways of creating groups lead to new groups, [...] and not just more groups but more kinds of groups.”

“[B]ecause the minimum costs of being an organization in the first place are relatively high, certain activities may have some value but not enough to make them worth pursuing in any organized way. New social tools are altering this equation by lowering the costs of coordinating group action.”

“The low cost of aggregating information also allowed the formalization of sharing [...].”

“Our social tools are not an improvement to modern society, they are a challenge to it.”