Product Description

Welcome to the new future of involvement. Forming groups is easier than it’s ever been: unpaid volunteers can build an encyclopaedia together in their spare time, mistreated customers can join forces to get their revenge on airlines and high street banks, and one man with a laptop can raise an army to help recover a stolen phone. The results of this new world of easy collaboration can be both good (young people defying an oppressive government with a guerrilla ice-cream eating protest) and bad (girls sharing advice for staying dangerously skinny) but it’s here and, as Clay Shirky shows, it’s affecting … well, everybody. For the first time, we have the tools to make group action truly a reality. And they’re going to change our whole world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6169 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-29
• Original language: German
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
'As crisply argued and as enlightening a book about the internet as has been written' Daily Telegraph 'As usable as the technology he writes about' Independent 'Clay Shirky's masterpiece ! brilliant insights that make me think ... that's how it all works' Cory Doctorow, co-editor of Boing Boing 'Anyone interested in the vitality and influence of groups of human beings ... needs to read this book' - Steven Johnson, author of Emergence 'Terrifically clever' Guardian 'Gordon Brown has been reading Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody, currently the book of the moment among webheads and new media obsessives.' - Matthew D'Ancona, Telegraph

About the Author
Clay Shirky writes, teaches, and consults on the social and economic effects of the internet. A professor at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, he has consulted for Nokia, Procter and Gamble, News Corp., the BBC, the US Navy, and Lego. Over the years, his writings have appeared in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, Wired, and IEEE Computer.

Customer Reviews

Shirky
This book begins with a brilliant little story which goes on to illustate the books contents perfectly. If you like what technological communications can presently can do, in a beautifully written hand, then quickly buy this book.

interesting insight
How is accessible, affordable, and now ubiquitous, information technology changing the way we communicate with each other? I thought I new, this book made me realise there's far more to how we are changing how we relate to each other. There's no high tech or high brow stuff in here, a simple, readable, lay-mans introduction with some suggestions of why and how things like email and chat rooms are changing the world. At first I saw a threat, but now I see opportunity. Are we in at the beginning of a far reaching and unstoppable paradigm shift?

An academic but still awe-inspiring
For me, Clay Shirky delivers some great case studies to prove his points and backs up with useful references. I keep thinking...bell curve v long tail v power law distribution - and of course the Mermaid Parades. Change hits us all - read this and see for yourself.