I loved this book. It's the first time I've read anything by Clay Shirky. I was taking a class on Web 2.0 technologies and this was one of our text books. Right from the beginning, I was grabbed by the story about the girl who lost her phone and got it back because of the power of social networking. Really good read. ( )

This book unfolds and explains an interesting theory about the internet and how it changed modern communication, our day-to-day life and our thinking. I liked his description of the steps from the medieval scribers to Gutenberg's printing technique, from the telephone and the radio/TV to the first years of the Internet and then the generation of Facebook, Flickr and Twitter. It opened my eyes how much this revolution arose from economic (and time sparing) facts and rules and how professional writers saw the wrong danger for their professional future (not "America Today", but "The New York Times-online"). I learnt a lot of details I have never been aware of: That flash-mobs took place in Belorus for political reasons, that the Germans tanks in the Blitzkrieg were inferior to the French ones, but were equipped with radios, the development of Small World Patterns, and Linus and Meetup, and many other interesting details as well.

Now we get two the two stars I did not give to this book. First it's the lack of speed, especially in the beginning chapters. I mean how many words do you need to explain that it is slightly cheaper, quicker and more efficient to create a website to reach a million of readers in 2006 A.D. than to do the same by distributing hieroglyphics in 2006 B.C.? I think 34 words are enough to get he idea, but Shirky thinks it should take at least 20 pages.

Second – and that's probably only my problem – I have too often read about the "Birthday Paradox" in the last months. In many books and in most of the big papers. Seems to be en vogue nowadays. And it never works for me. Asked if I would take a bet if two of 50 people share the same birthday I would always say yes. Not because I look through the obscure rules of probability-math because I – as a professional gambler (lawyer) – take ANY wager no matter how bad my chances are. The same has to be said for the Evergreen “Prisoner’s Dilemma”. Next time I will read about his I will swear to whistle-blow everyone for every atrocity, no matter if he’s guilty or not. ( )

Writer Lev Grossman has chosen to discuss Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody: How Change Happens When People Come Together on FiveBooks as one of the top five on his subject- The World Wide Web, saying that:

"...A lot of ink has been spilled, much of it by me, about the Web 2.0 revolution, and how it changes the way business and art and socialising and political organisation get done. Shirky is simply the best person at articulating what’s very weird and new about what’s going on...."

The full interview is available here: http://five-books.com/interviews/lev-... ( )

This is the kind of book that every teacher, school administrator, librarian, and school/district computer services manager should read and consider. As an educator, what I liked most about the book is that Shirky talks not so much about the technologies themselves as much as some of the ways that society and institutions may change due to the growth and mass adoption of a variety of communication technologies. This is a great read! ( )

19 Oct 2009 - Amazon (I had a lot of Amazon vouchers from the previous Xmas/Bday to spend!)

Apparently this book is quite controversial - I haven't looked at any reviews up to now as I don't want to influence this one.

Shirky does seem to spend a fairly substantial book telling us that new technology has given us new ways to form new types of - and larger - groups, which in turn is starting to change the way people interact with each other and with traditional organisations such as corporations and governments. He gives lots of examples, for instance students getting together on Facebook to complain against HSBC's treatment of their overdrafts, and the huge amount of information which poured out of China after the recent earthquakes, as examples of the latter, and services such as Flickr and Wikipedia, which allow the pooling of information and images without traditional management.

The author does rely on other people's research a fair bit, weaving in current luminaries such as Malcolm Gladwell and the people looking at six degrees of separation. But then little research is completely new and it does ground the work into other people's systems. It's really good on the history and actual workings of phenomena such as Meet Up (this section mentions BookCrossing!) and Wikipedia, and I think this is what actually gives the book its main worth to me, as a document of the times we're living in now, quite a few technologies and groups with which I interact, rather than as a ground-breaking work with a lot of new information in it.

Right - now I'll go and see what the controversy was about! ( )