Review of Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody”

 

In his 2008 book, “Here Comes Everybody”, Clay Shirky delves into the new technology of our era and details how such innovation is profoundly reshaping society. While his analysis is broad, two themes feature most prominently.

First, Shirky regularly highlights that the cost of global publishing has “collapsed”. In the past, publishing was a relatively costly endeavour. It demanded significant resources to cover overhead costs (e.g. offices), payrolled employees, editors, reproduction, and distribution. As a result, the ability to publish broadly was tied to ownership of communications machinery, thus limiting the number of publishers and the volume they published. Today, however, the internet and personal computer have drastically reduced these barriers (or “disincentives to participation”). Now, virtually anyone can write and widely disseminate their ideas. In the words of Shirky, publication has undergone “mass amateurization”.

A second major theme in Shirky’s work is how modern technology (particularly the internet) has enabled us to form new groups in new ways. Because we are more connected and socially visible than ever before, we are better able to locate (and be located by) like-minded people. Furthermore, joining and forming groups have never been so simple. The result, explains Shirky, has been the creation of a “small world network”. In this network, small densely connected groups are “bridged” to other such groups via “connectors”. Members are then able to meet new individuals, as well as spread information, through their existing contacts.

The implications of these 2 major themes are immense. To begin, the deprofessionalization of publication has allowed people to publish anything – regardless of content or profitability. This has led to an incredible proliferation of information, as well as a sort of “cultural flowering”. Next, the ease of creating groups has facilitated coordinated effort and collective action on a massive scale. It has altered the “old limits for size, sophistication, and scope of unsupervised efforts” and allowed people to experiment with novel ways of “getting things done”.

But not all effects have been completely positive. As Shirky notes, the incredible quantity of material on the internet, and the sheer speed in which it is produced and shared, has made it impossible to filter before publication. Furthermore, our newfound ability to create and improve content (e.g. user-generated content) online has led to the loss of thousands of jobs. Finally, modern tools have allowed certain groups to form (e.g. pro-Anorexia groups) and share information which might ultimately prove detrimental.

Thus, at the end of the day, new technology is not necessarily improving society, but challenging it. This has led, maintains Shirky, to the creation of an entirely new global “ecosystem”.

Overall, Shirky’s findings affirm many of the conclusions of his contemporaries. For example, in describing how new tools have allowed people to unite and provide for each other’s needs, all while circumventing traditional institutions, Shirky reiterates Charlene Li’s concept of “the groundswell”. Li arguably digs deeper into the real-life manifestations of the groundswell, but both authors outline the same phenomenon. A further parallel can be drawn between the findings of Shirky of Chris Anderson.  In his book, Shirky references the “power distribution law” (or Pareto Principle), explaining how collaborative efforts on the internet generally involve a few people who make massive contributions and many more who make minor contributions. This matches what Anderson calls “the long tail”, although he focuses on the long tail more as a business model (i.e. selling not just “hits” to many, but selling a wide variety of products to niche markets).

To conclude, Clay Shirky offers an astute and balanced analysis in “Here Comes Everybody”. In my view, he rightly emphasizes the transformative effects of modern tools on our ability to publish, share, and come together, noting that these effects are most profound when the tools reach critical mass. He also shrewdly avoids taking a normative stance, observing that these effects can be both “good” and “bad”.  Certainly, I believe there are areas in which Shirky is off the mark (e.g. his belief that the “promise” of an online collaborative project must be modest to entice participation) or could have elaborated further (e.g. the Coasean floor concept). Still, I would recommend Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody” to anyone with an interest in modern technology, media, and/or group dynamics.

Links:

Here Comes Everybody: http://www.amazon.com/Here-Comes-Everybody-Organizing-Organizations/dp/1594201536

Charlene Li’s “Groundswell”: http://www.amazon.com/Groundswell-Winning-Transformed-Social-Technologies/dp/1422125009

The Long Tail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Tail and http://www.amazon.com/Long-Tail-Future-Business-Selling/dp/1401302378

For more media blogs: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/  and  http://www.darrenherman.com/