Clay Shirky – “Here Comes Everybody”

Clay Shirky – Here Comes Everybody

We Change Society
When we change the way we communicate, we change society. (Shirky, p. 17)

Sharing is Caring
We are living in the middle of a remarkable increase in our ability to share, to cooperate with one another, and to take collective action, all outside the framework of traditional institutions and organizations. (Shirky, p. 20)

Breaking Down Walls
Most of the barriers to group action have collapsed, and without those barriers, we are free to explore new ways of gathering together and getting things done. (Shirky, p. 22)

When Will the Change Happen?
Group action gives human society its particular character, and anything that changes the way groups get things done will affect society as a whole. This change will not be limited to any particular set of institutions or functions. For any given organization, the important questions are “When will the change happen?” and “What will change?” The only to answers we can rule out are never, and nothing. (Shirky, p. 23)

Business As Usual
Anyone who has worked in an organization with more than a dozen employees recognizes institutional costs. Anytime you are faced with too many meetings, too much paperwork, or too many layers of approval … everyone complains about institutional overhead, without much hope of changing things. In that world (the world we lived in until recently), if you wanted to take on a task of any significance, managerial oversight was just one of the costs of doing business. (Shirky, p. 45)

Everybody Get Together
The collapse of transaction costs makes it easier for people to get together—so much easier, in fact, that it is changing the world. (Shirky, p. 48)

Rungs on the Ladder
You can think of group undertaking as a kind of ladder of activities, activities that are enabled or improved by social tools. The rungs on the ladder, in order of difficulty, are sharing, cooperation, and collective action. (Shirky, p. 49)

Bibliography

Shirky, Clay. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. Penguin Group, 2008.