| Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Clay Shirky |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Non-fiction |
| Publisher | Penguin Group |
| Publication date | February 28, 2008 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 327 pp |
| ISBN | 978-1-59420-153-0 |
| OCLC Number | 168716646 |
| Dewey Decimal | 303.48/33 22 |
| LC Classification | HM851 .S5465 2008 |
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations is a book by Clay Shirky published by Penguin Press in 2008, which evaluates the effect of the Internet on modern group dynamics. The author considers examples such as Wikipedia and MySpace in his analysis. This is the author's sixth book.
The author says the book is about "what happens when people are given the tools to do things together, without needing traditional organizational structures".[1]
The title of the work alludes to HCE, a recurring and central figure in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake.[2]
Contents |
In the book, Shirky recounts how social tools such as blogging software like WordPress and Twitter, file sharing platforms like Flickr, and online collaboration platforms like Wikipedia support group conversation and group action in a way that previously could only be achieved through institutions. In the same way the printing press increased individual expression, and the telephone increased communications between individuals, Shirky argues that with the advent of online social tools, groups can form without the previous restrictions of time and cost. Shirky observes that:
"[Every] institution lives in a kind of contradiction: it exists to take advantage of group effort, but some of its resources are drained away by directing that effort. Call this the institutional dilemma--because an institution expends resources to manage resources, there is a gap between what those institutions are capable of in theory and in practice, and the larger the institution, the greater those costs."[3]
Online social tools, Shirky argues, allow groups to form around activities 'whose costs are higher than the potential value,'[4] for institutions. Shirky further argues that the successful creation of online groups relies on successful fusion of a, 'plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain for the user.'[5] However, Shirky warns that this system should not be interpreted as a recipe for the successful use of social tools as the interaction between the components is too complex.
In Chapter Two, "Sharing Anchors Community", the author uses theories from the 1937 paper The Nature of the Firm by Nobel Prize winning economist Ronald Coase to access the various challenges that transaction costs pose to institutions. From these theories, Shirky derives two terms that represent the constraints under which institutions operate: Coasean Ceiling and Coasean Floor.
The author argues that social tools drastically reduce transaction costs, allowing loosely structured groups with limited managerial oversight to operate under the Coasean Floor. As an example, he cites Flickr, which allows groups to organically form around themes of images without the transaction costs of managerial oversight.
In Chapter Eleven, "Promise, Tool, Bargain", Shirky states that each success story of using social tools to form groups contained within the book is an example of the complex fusion of 'a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain with the users.'
The first challenge to creating an effective promise is that the claim on the users' time for a particular activity must be greater than the activity the users are already doing. A second challenge is that social tools be satisfying to the individual user. Shirky suggests three strategies for handling these challenges.
A social tool is only as good as the job it is meant for, and it must be a tool that the user actually wants to use. Here the author switches focus away from the types of tools to the types of groups (large and small) that the tools are designed to support. Small groups tend to be more tightly knit and conversational than large groups.
The author argues that the bargain is the most complex characteristic of the successful forming of groups using social tools, because it is both less explicit than promise and tool, and it requires more input by the user.
The Bookseller declared the book one of the two "most reviewed" books over the Easter weekend, noting that the Telegraph's reviewer Dibbell found it "as crisply argued and as enlightening a book about the Internet as has been written" and the Guardian reviewer Stuart Jeffries called it "terrifically clever' and 'harrowing".[8]
In the Times Higher Education, Tara Brabazon, professor of Media Studies at University of Brighton, criticizes Here Comes Everybody for excluding "older citizens, the poor, and the illiterate", from Shirky's "Everybody". Brabazon also argues that the, "assumption that 'we' can learn about technology from technology - without attention to user-generated contexts rather than content - is the gaping, stunning silence of Shirky's argument."[9]
In an interview with Journalism.co.uk, Clay Shirky recants some of his own work that "democratic legitimation is itself enough to regard aggregate public opinion as being clearly binding on the government." Shirky uses the example of the prioritization of a campaign to legalize medical marijuana on Change.gov, stating that while it was a 'net positive,' for democracy, it was not an absolute positive. He concedes that public pressure via the Internet could be another implementation method for special interest groups.[10]