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Here Comes Everybody

The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

By Clay Shirky

(43)

| Others | 9780143114949

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Book Description

A revelatory examination of how the wildfirelike spread of new forms of social interaction enabled by technology is changing the way humans form groups and exist within them, with profound long-term economic and social effects-for good and for ill A handful of kite hobbyists scattered around the world find each other online and collaborate on the most radical improvement in kite design in decades. A midwestern professor of Middle Eastern history starts a blog after 9/11 that becomes essential reading for journalists covering the Iraq war. Activists use the Internet and e-mail to bring offensive comments made by Trent Lott and Don Imus to a wide public and hound them from their positions. A few people find that a world-class online encyclopedia created entirely by volunteers and open for editing by anyone, a wiki, is not an impractical idea. Jihadi groups trade inspiration and instruction and showcase terrorist atrocities to the world, entirely online. A wide group of unrelated people swarms to a Web site about the theft of a cell phone and ultimately goads the New York City police to take action, leading to the culprit's arrest. With accelerating velocity, our age's new technologies of social networking are evolving, and evolving us, into new groups doing new things in new ways, and old and new groups alike doing the old things better and more easily. You don't have to have a MySpace page to know that the times they are a changin'. Hierarchical structures that exist to manage the work of groups are seeing their raisons d'tre swiftly eroded by the rising technological tide. Business models are being destroyed, transformed, born at dizzying speeds, and the larger social impact is profound. One of the culture's wisest observers of the transformational power of the new forms of tech-enabled social interaction is Clay Shirky, and Here Comes Everybody is his marvelous reckoning with the ramifications of all this on what we do and who we are. Like Lawrence Lessig on the effect of new technology on regimes of cultural creation, Shirky's assessment of the impact of new technology on the nature and use of groups is marvelously broad minded, lucid, and penetrating; it integrates the views of a number of other thinkers across a broad range of disciplines with his own pioneering work to provide a holistic framework for understanding the opportunities and the threats to the existing order that these new, spontaneous networks of social interaction represent. Wikinomics, yes, but also wikigovernment, wikiculture, wikievery imaginable interest group, including the far from savory. A revolution in social organization has commenced, and Clay Shirky is its brilliant chronicler.

Critics

Can the Internet save the book?

(With additional questions from James Mustich, editor in chief of the Barnes & Noble Review). According to media columnist Michael Wolff, the name Clay Shirky is "now uttered in technology circles with the kind of reverence with which left-wingers us ... (read full critics)

salon published on Wed, 15 Sep 2010

9 Reviews

Digital networks change the way we connect and organize.

Digital networks change the way we connect and organize. I ran into this one at the local library (computer section??), so I read it in Dutch. There were many parts I liked, but I did not make notes this time. For instance:
every professional, â¦, has a tendency to believe that what started as a so ... (continue)

Digital networks change the way we connect and organize. I ran into this one at the local library (computer section??), so I read it in Dutch. There were many parts I liked, but I did not make notes this time. For instance:
every professional, â¦, has a tendency to believe that what started as a solution to a temporal problem is equal to a law of nature; Where our communication changes, society changes; There is no recipe for the successful use of social technologies. Each system is a mix of social and technological factors.
Read this book, e.g. if you want an insight on why your group is (not) working: the fact that you can easily create a group (e.g. Linkedin) does not make it a group which will last. Common purpose, mix of roles, a quantity of at least one 1,000, â¦ and give it a year to try out. Interesting publication. Find Shirky on Ted as well.

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Jw. said on Aug 18, 2011 | Add your feedback

Ho letto Here comes everybody.

"Young people are taking better advantage of social tools not because they know more useful things, but because they know fewer useless things."
Cioè i giovani se la cavano meglio perché hanno meno cazzate in testa. Infatti:
"I’m old enough to know a lot of things just from life experience ... (continue)

"Young people are taking better advantage of social tools not because they know more useful things, but because they know fewer useless things."
Cioè i giovani se la cavano meglio perché hanno meno cazzate in testa. Infatti:
"I’m old enough to know a lot of things just from life experience.
I know that newspapers are where you get political views and look for jobs.
I know music comes from stores.
I know that complicated things like encyclopedias and software are created by professionals.
In the last fifteen years I’ve had to unlearn every one of those things and a million others, because they have stopped being true."
Così dice Clay Shirky nel suo bel libro, dove ci spiega come
"Le rivoluzioni non avvengono quando la società adotta nuove tecnologie, ma quando adotta nuovi comportamenti."
Altre chicche?
"Every web page is a latent community."
"When we change the way we communicate, we change society."
"The professional outlook can become a disadvantage, preventing the professionals from understanding major changes to the structure of their profession."
"We are used to a world where little things happen for love and big things happen for money. Love motivates people to bake a cake, money motivates people to make an encyclopedia. Now we can make big things for love."
"All businesses are media businesses."
Il libro in una frase:
"Sappiamo tutti che il mondo sta cambiando (in fondo non è una novità). La vera novità è che sta cambiando grazie ai nuovi modi di comunicare, che permettono nuovi modi di stare insieme. In loosely structured groups, operating without managerial direction and outside the profit motive."
Una vita più sostenibile, outside the profit motive.
Se lo vedo a Lambrate gli pago una birra, a zio Clay.
Se vuoi leggere il post originale su ohmymarketing.wordpress.com clicca qui:
http://ohmymarketing.wordpress.com/2008/07/30/ho-letto-…

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Coworking Cowo / Massimo Carraro said on Jul 8, 2010 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

A beautiful mind

Clay Shirky gets the Internet. He gets it better than pretty much any other commentator out there. This may be his best book, explaining the hows and the whys of humans suddenly getting way better at group behaviour.

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Alberto Cottica said on May 23, 2010 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

An interesting overview of how the online world has been changed by social tools like wikipedia. It offers also many examples of how those tools interact with the "real world", dispelling -if it were necessary- the media-induced idea that "cyberspace" and everyday life don't mix.
It is a good r ... (continue)

An interesting overview of how the online world has been changed by social tools like wikipedia. It offers also many examples of how those tools interact with the "real world", dispelling -if it were necessary- the media-induced idea that "cyberspace" and everyday life don't mix.
It is a good read for those that want to discover the realities of social tools and social software and also interesting for those that are already familiar with these things as it offers a way of thinking about those from different perspectives.

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Carlo said on Aug 19, 2009 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

The best book about the internet. Must read for anybody active in this field.

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alper said on Mar 31, 2009 | Add your feedback

Dalla copertina:
An examination of how the rapid spread of new forms of social interaction enabled by technology is changing the way humans form groups and exist within them, with profound long-term economic and social effects--for good and for ill. Our age's new technologies of social networki ... (continue)

Dalla copertina:
An examination of how the rapid spread of new forms of social interaction enabled by technology is changing the way humans form groups and exist within them, with profound long-term economic and social effects--for good and for ill. Our age's new technologies of social networking are evolving, and evolving us, into new groups doing new things in new ways, and old and new groups alike doing the old things better and more easily. Hierarchical structures that exist to manage the work of groups are seeing their raisons d'eˆtre swiftly eroded by the rising tide. Business models are being destroyed, transformed, born at dizzying speeds, and the larger social impact is profound. Clay Shirky is one of our wisest observers of the transformational power of the new forms of tech-enabled social interaction, and this is his reckoning with the ramifications of all this on what we do and who we are.
Discusses and uses examples of how digital networks transform the ability of humans to gather and cooperate with one another

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Domenico (Ingo) Bogliolo said on Mar 17, 2009 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback