Serious question - who is Clay Shirky? Some "philosopher" type funded by a billionaire?

I tried to read his Wikipedia page but the text sounds like a moronic redditor trying very hard and failing to be clever...

Shirky asserts that collaborative crowdsourced work results from "a successful fusion of a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain with the users." He states that the promise of what the user will get out of participating in a project leads to a person's desire to get involved.

Collaborators will then choose the best social networking tool to do the job. One that "must be designed to fit the job being done, and it must help people do something they actually want to do." The bargain, Shirky states, defines what collaborators expect from each other's participation in the project. Shirky's 'Promise, Tool, Bargain' premise restates aspects of the Uses and Gratifications Theory of mass media research.