Here Comes Everybody 
Customer Ratings: - Disappointing. Sadly, not as good a book as I was hoping for - it has all the breathless, unthinking enthusiasm of Wikinomics with none of the careful consideration in WeThink, marking it firmly as one of the overly exuberant family of books on the topic - in short, it gives one very biased side of a very complex topic.
Some of the author s online writings are thoroughly fascinating and well considered, such as his thoughts on taxonomies versus folksonomies, but none of that intelligence is really shown in this book. It s not bad by any means - it s entertaining and well-written, but it s not as informative and insightful as I had expected from a book by Clay Shirky. - Here comes everybody?. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky is the book of the moment. The 2008 version of The Tipping Point. Shirky writes a book about the way that productive, collaborative groups form-groups that are larger and more distributed than at any other time: the places where our social networks and technological networks overlap.
Shirky s prose provides some great case studies that I am likely to turn into slides when I present and provide important food for thought particularly for those involved in reputation management and crisis communications programmes. Shirky writes in an accessible easy-to-read way that moves his book beyond an audience of web-centric wonks like me to the `everybody of the book title.
What the book lacks is quantitative data to support the qualitative anecdotal research that Shirky pulled together. My other concern is that people will think that social media is excessively easy to do. It isn t, for every successful campaign there are countless numbers of campaigns that don t get the attention they deserve - the Boycott Strada and Cafe Rouge Facebook group being a case in point. - Like spending time with a clever uncle. What an inspiring and wonderful read this is. Clay Shirky s book Here Comes Everybody gives hope to anyone who has been trapped in a bureaucracy and said to himself There has to be a better way than this!
According to Shirky, there s some good news: There is.
While traditional structures in say the workplace reflect the intended aims of the organisation, other, heatmappy ways of looking at the most productive areas reveal that the business may be working quite differently to how the Personnel Department might think!
And just as this is true for formal organisations, Shirky shows that it can apply among strangers, in politics and many more examples besides.
At times, the reader wonders whether the Everybody of the title that technology is allowing to come together are really as likely to use their new potentials for good, and Shirky gives examples such as oppressive churches where the end effect of technology can be to limit benefits.
With that objection, though, this is like listening to your well informed clever uncle tell you tales of the past - except these ones are tales of the future! - Interesting review of the effect of the internet. but doesn t dwell on the dark side..
Clay Shirky is primarily interested in the sociological effects of the internet and other networking tools (mobile phones etc.), or how people use them and are affected by them. Anyone with a mobile phone will be familiar with the looser social arrangements it allows. (I ll text you when I get there etc.).
In essence his thesis is that the costs of networking have collapsed and allowed us to try before you buy (or publish then filter as he puts it rather than the other way round as was the case).
In the past only companies had the resources to publish in any meaningful way, and they had to weigh up the cost of trying things and had to play safe as a consequence. He s broadly correct on the positive way that the internet has enabled Linux, wikipedia and other social networking sites (facebook, stay at home mums etc.) to exist where they couldn t have before, but he doesn t address the fact that there is a negative side to all of this - cyberbullying being a classic example. Now we re all networked the pursuit of the mob is harder to escape, he also doesn t address online vigilantism - PC Pro s columnist Dick Pountain has complained about articles being deleted by rogue groups of over-vigilant un-knowledgeable users.
His book reads very well and is full of well considered stories which pull you through, it s worth a read for anyone who like The Future Just Happened or the The Long Tail: How Endless Choice Is Creating Unlimited Demand . In some ways this book is the same central insight as the Long Tail - collapsing publishing costs allow more experimentation and a more ad-hoc arrangement of interested people. Both books focus on the power law that allows the tail (minority) effects to be economically viable.
An interesting book, which I recommend, nonetheless. - Antidote to Cult of the Amateur. This is one of the best books I have read recently (counting books fact and fiction), it is extremely well written and obvious care was taken to make it flow from beginning to end. Shirky has an extensive Bibliography, but instead of intruding into the text it is collected at the back with chapter and page links and short explanations. There are many excellent points made and I have cited them to friends and colleagues as I read the book. I guess the fact that stays most with me is the explanation of Participation Imbalance, for example many people use Wikipedia but few contribute, of those who contribute many only contribute once, but the small percentage who contribute a lot and care for the quality is enough for sustainability.
I see this as an antidote for Keen s, Cult of the Amateur. Keen want the reader to feel sorry for professions that were lost to technological advances, while Shirky shows that such change has happened many times in the past, and points out changes such as writing going from a profession to an everyday skill.
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Here Comes Everybody (ID: 0713999896)
