Shirky, Clay; Here Comes Everybody : The Power of Organizing without Organizations (Penguin, 2009)
Blogs, wikis and other Web 2.0 applications are revolutionizing the social order, a development that's
cause for more excitement than alarm, argues interactive telecommunications professor Shirky.
From Publisher's Weekly:
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. (
Blogs, wikis and other Web 2.0 applications are revolutionizing the social order, a development that's
cause for more excitement than alarm, argues interactive telecommunications professor Shirky.
From Publisher's Weekly:
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. (
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