Saturday, April 05, 2008

Here Comes Everybody - a book by Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky is a well known educator and writer about social network topics. I have followed some of his work for the past few years. On Thursday April 3, he was interviewed on the Stephen Colbert Report and what he said sounded a lot like the "Common Adventure" group organizing process I have described earlier in this blog.

He has written a brand new and exciting book titled "Here Comes Everybody, The Power of Organizing Without Organizations." And he is providing a new Here Comes Everybody blog to "chronicle and extend the themes of the book."

I have not read the book yet, but I have looked at some of the web reviews and a video of Clay talking about the book. A book review by Elizabeth McKenna of Radar Reviews notes that Shirky "... offers an extremely readable sociological text on how communication technologies (cell phones, Internet, etc...) strengthen the world's ability to form social and political groups with ease and provide significant platforms for even the simplest of citizens."

The video was recorded at the Harvard Law School on March 4, 2008. Here is a link to the video and I will provide a summary of important concepts he talked about. Sharing, Conversation, Collaboration, and Collective Action.

I intend to purchase the book and keep reading the blog and will write more comments here in the future.

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