There is a whole lot of stuff about Clay Shirky (internet/social networking guru) online. Of course. I've somehow managed not to hear about the guy until just now. He's written a book called "Here Comes Everybody: The Power or Organizing Without Organizations," which looks like it may be a bit of internet navel-gazing that's worth checking out. Except I guess a book, discussed on TV, about the Internet, doesn't exactly qualify as navel-gazing. Whatever. Here's the Barnes & Noble summary:
This book's thesis is simple: Digital networks are transforming the ways we connect and cooperate. According to author Clay Shirky, these new forms of technology-enabled social interaction are changing how we form communities and exchange information. With example after fascinating example, this expert on interactive telecommunication describes how these rapidly made connections are transfiguring every layer of our culture, from business organizations and political hierarchies to interdisciplinary studies and social networks. A radical look at how bloggers are unclogging our lives.
There are other reviews online at B&N, of course, as there are at Amazon. And, well, all over the place. Plus, of course, his own site, the book blog site (which doesn't render quite right in Firefox for me), the publisher's page (plus excerpt and a blog at their site)... lotsa internetty stuff. And not just internetty: my favorite bit from one of the mainstream articles is the title of the BusinessWeek piece:
Real World 2.0
In a new book, Here Comes Everybody, author and academic Clay Shirky argues the future is here; it's time to get on with it
Of the several reviews and interviews I skimmed, the one at arstechnica looks the most thorough. But I'll give you a bit from BoingBoing instead:
he's one of those people who is able to crystallize the half-formed ideas that I've been trying to piece together into glittering, brilliant insights that make me think, yes, of course, that's how it all works.
Clay's book makes sense of the way that groups are using the Internet. Really good sense. In a treatise that spans all manner of social activity from vigilantism to terrorism, from Flickr to Howard Dean, from blogs to newspapers, Clay unpicks what has made some "social" Internet media into something utterly transformative, while other attempts have fizzled or fallen to griefers and vandals. Clay picks perfect anecdotes to vividly illustrate his points, then shows the larger truth behind them.
Clay's gift here is in explaining why the trivial minutae of Internet communications -- Twittery nothings and LiveJournalish angst -- matter, and why the weighty gravitas of the Internet -- dissidents risking arrest, victims finding succour -- aren't the only thing online that's worthy. In so doing, he manages to illuminate the way that every institution is prone to being recast by the net, and how to manage that change for the best possible outcome.
Well, I guess we'll see.
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