Here Comes Everybody

December 17, 2007
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.

February 15, 2008
Posing questions about how the Internet affectsgroup organization, technology writer and consultant Shirkychallenges the perception that it heralds an egalitarian era. Leaning on human nature, such as the varying intensity of engagement within any group with a nominally common interest, Shirky demonstrates in numerous examples how a very few individuals or Web sites come to dominate the activity at hand. Shirky opens with the transformation of one lost cell phone into a cause c'l'bre after the finder wouldnt return it, ultimately resulting in her arrest. Driven by one person outraged atthe effrontery, this story has analogs in Shirkys analysis of what makes Wikipedia work or an airline heed customers complaints. Generally a committed few find similarly minded folks, who widen the circle with an implicit promise of results at low cost, perhaps redress from the airline. Exploring this dynamics impact on journalism and business, Shirky astutely discerns the implicationsof peopleacting on their own, without the need to transact their concerns through a hierarchical organization.A perceptive appraisal of the contemporary technology-society interface.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)