Week 2: Here Comes Everybody

Here Comes Everybody: the Power of Organizing without Organizations (Ch1-Ch6 )

by Clay Shirky

Summary:

Shirky began his book by using a story about how to get a lost phone back to demonstrate the power of group work and collaboration tool -- the Internet. The following chaper (Ch2) sounded more like telling organization and communication theory and principle. Cost / effectiveness were mentioned. Ch3 described the downfall of traditional media. Shirky observed that now everyone could release media (text / audio / video product) on the Internet, challenging current pop culture structure. Ch4 wondered an ethic question: what to release, what not to release, who held the power to check publication on the Internet. In Ch 5, wikipedia story was cited to reveal how people volunteerly contribute to such a mass scale non-profit project, and what technology had helped such a project (work breaking). Ch6 described how collaborative action blowed out Catholic church in Boston, with Internet collaboration.

Thoughts:
With Internet, many used-to-be impossible things happened and the new media is reshaping our world.