Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
by Clay Shirky
Blogs, wikis and other Web 2.0 accoutrements are revolutionizing the
social order, a development that's cause for more excitement than
alarm, argues interactive telecommunications professor Shirky. He
contextualizes the digital networking age with philosophical,
sociological, economic and statistical theories and points to its major
successes and failures. Grassroots activism stands among the
winners—Belarus's flash mobs, for example, blog their way to
unprecedented antiauthoritarian demonstrations. Likewise,
user/contributor-managed Wikipedia raises the bar for production
efficiency by throwing traditional corporate hierarchy out the window.
Print journalism falters as publishing methods are transformed through
the Web. Shirky is at his best deconstructing Web failures like
Wikitorial, the Los Angeles Times's
attempt to facilitate group op-ed writing. Readers will appreciate the
Gladwellesque lucidity of his assessments on what makes or breaks group
efforts online: Every story in this book relies on the successful
fusion of a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable
bargain with the users. The sum of Shirky's incisive exploration, like
the Web itself, is greater than its parts.
