Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

"Group action gives human society its particular character, and anything that changes the way groups get things done will affect society as a whole. ... These changes will transform the world everywhere groups of people come together to accomplish something, which is to say everywhere."

In this excellent book, the author examines how technology is making communication easier, and what effects that is having on society. Why do some projects -- be they businesses, communities, or projects -- succeed, and others fail? Why do the blogs of young people read so differently to those of older people? Which professions are at risk of obsolescence? Do new social tools enable new kinds of social groups, and what might these groups be like?

Shirky is show more a clear writer, slowly building up observation upon observation until his conclusions seem obvious. The whole volume is a fairly easy read. And, tellingly, I've found myself bringing up many of his points in a variety of conversations since I finished it. The book is never shouty or dull, and it seems to have changed the way I think about a number of things.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in technology and society, and how they affect each other. show less

A good examination of the ways new social tools have changed our society and will continue to do so. Although the book is already more than four years old, an eternity in the world of Internet commentary, most of what he has to say is still valid—and because his tone is measured and he avoids gee-whizzing, it's not hard to imagine where he would have gone with his ideas in 2012.

Shirky takes off from the concept of Coasian economics, market theory originated by Ronald Coase in 1937 that looked at the contractual costs and benefits of hierarchical organizations and their advantages over the free market. The premise here is that because online communications have lowered the cost of gathering groups of people together—whether in money, show more effort, time, materials, or manpower—this radically alters all sorts of equations throughout society. He cycles through a series of anecdotal scenarios to make his points, explaining them clearly and relevantly, without jargon; the examples are well-picked and illustrate his ideas without being heavy-handed. And his commentary is open-ended enough that you can sit back afterward and extrapolate on how it bears on the wired world of 2012, what works and fails online, and why. It's smart and thoughtful, and still relevant—no mean feat for an Internet sociology study. show less

Clay Shirky, whose writing and presentations on Internet technology and social change are consistently sharp and engaging, provides a from-the-field report on our continuing evolution from hierarchical, highly organized entities to the far less formal collaborations fostered by social networking resources. “Social tools provide…action by loosely structured groups, operating without managerial direction and outside the profit motive,” he reminds us (p. 47), and the result is explosive in terms of loosely organized groups’ ability to produce results previously unimagined. “Ridiculously easy group-forming matters because the desire to be part of a group that shares, cooperates, or acts in concert is a basic human instinct that show more has always been constrained by transaction costs. Now that group-forming has gone from hard to ridiculously easy, we are seeing an explosion of experiments with new groups and new kinds of groups,” he explains (p. 54). His explorations take us down a variety of paths, including what happens to the concept of “a professional” when social media tools open up a profession such as journalism to everyone through blogging; we’re also treated to an exploration of how collaboration succeeds in producing magnificent resources including Wikipedia. He is far from serving as an unquestioning cheerleader for what he observes in the use of social networking tools: “…a good social tool is like a good woodworking tool—it must be designed to fit the job being done, and it must help people do something they actually want to do,” he notes (p. 265). By the end of "Here Comes Everybody," Shirky helps us establish a bit of perspective on the changes through which we are living and in which we are participating: “The invention of tools that facilitate group formation is less like ordinary technological change and more like an event, something that has already happened. As a result, the important questions aren’t about whether these tools will spread or reshape society but rather how they do so,” he concludes (p. 300). For those who are still wondering why so many people are diving into collaboration through online social networking tools, Shirky serves as a sympathetic and attractive guide. show less

I'm having trouble figuring out exactly why I like Clay Shirky so much. I have a few candidates for the main reason. First, he tends to have insightful things to say about topics I'm interested in. My favorite thing he has done is his lecture "Ontology is Overrated". However, while I'm not accusing him of being derivative, I can trace many of the ideas I like best in Shirky's work to Yochai Benkler.

So that leads me to think that perhaps what I like best about Shirky's work is his particular genius at finding interesting and revealing examples from which he extrapolates his key insights. In Here Comes Everybody, he tells the story of the lost phone, uses a wonderful comparison of reading social networking to hanging out in the mall. show more (It's not over-sharing, it's over-listening. On the web, someone like me can complain about vapid noise on Facebook, but if I were at the mall listening in to teens telling their stories it would be clear that I was the creepy one and the kids are just being kids.) From chapter to chapter, Shirky finds good examples and uses them to tease out what he thinks are the key principles.

The third candidate for "Why Nick like Clay Shirky so damn much" is that I tend to agree with his assertions. The printing press *IS* the best comparison for the read/write web. More *is* different. (We're both Internet exceptionalists.)

So, whether it is the quality of his insight, the power of his examples, or the persuasiveness of his conclusions, I tend to be a Shirky fan. Here Comes Everybody is an excellent example of his work and a must-read for anyone trying to make sense of what the current (or formerly current) state of communication technology is doing to us as a society. show less

It's always hard to say whether books about cutting-edge technology or social changes will age well and this book is no different. However, I have often found Clay Shirky's observations about internet culture to be clear, incisive, and free of the hype that often surrounds new technology. This book continues in that vein, with insightful and thought-provoking observations on social collaboration: what's new, what's not, what works and what doesn't.

Not as innovative as I had expected, given the hype I've heard, but a great read nonetheless. Smart, with good examples to back up his points, and also not as utopian or reactionary as much of the literature out there on new media.

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 show more 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! show less