Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky is a writer, speaker and professor specializing in analyzing the social and economic effects of the Internet. Here Comes Everybody looks at the impact of the Internet on "Organizing without organizations."

Shirky provides many examples of highly-disparate groups that have formed spontaneously around a particular issue or event simply through the use of social networking sites. He begins with a disturbing story about a lost cell phone that fell into the hands of a 16 year old girl. The owner was able to locate the phone by using various social networking sites. When the girl refused to return the phone, the owner's friend was able to garner widespread support and publicity by publishing a Blog informing the world of the situation and the girl's refusal to cooperate. He used the publicity to exert pressure on the NYPD to reclassify the phone from missing to stolen. Eventually, the phone was returned. Shirky poses the question "At what cost?" Clearly the response to this event far exceeded the scale it warranted, but technology made that possible.

Shirky provides other examples where cell phones were used to organize spontaneous, non-violent protests that had a significantly positive political outcome.

Shirky points out that most of the social chat that occurs on the web is mundane and intended for a small audience. He also provides evidence of tremendous creativity that might never have been shared without these tools. He notes that the World Wide Web has transformed the whole concept of publishing turning everyone into potential authors, editors and publishers. He cites the evolution of Wikipedia as the most dramatic example of this phenomenon.

Some interesting observations with relevance to education and innovation:

1. "In some cases the change that threatens the profession benefits society, as did the spread of the printing press; even in these situations the professionals can be relied on to care more about self-defense than about progress." This is consistent with Berkun's observation regarding resistance to innovation by "experts." It also supports the resistance to the use of technology in any transformative way in education.

2. Cites Richard Gabriel, a programmer for Sun Microsystems, who in 1991 predicted that a less elegant, but more simple programming language would be more successful that a more elegant and sophisticated one. He went on to conduct an experiment to test his theory and proved it to be correct. This is consistent with Clayton Christensen's model for the introduction of disruptive innovation.

3. Revolution doesn't happen when society adopts new technologies-it happens when society adopts new behaviors.

4. People connected to groups beyond their own can expect to deliver valuable ideas. An idea that is mundane in one group can be a valuable insight in another. Creativity by export-import.

For a social networking resource to be successful it must offer a "plausible promise," "an effective tool," and "an acceptable bargain" with users.

Shirky also provides a good explanation of the "Small World" concept. This theory says that the world is made up of small tightly-connected groups (networks) and larger loosely-connected groups. They intersect at various points (people) and create short routes to interpersonal connectivity. This concept was developed by Duncan Watts and is explained in detail in "Six Degrees of Separation."