From Publishers Weekly
Blogs, wikis and other Web 2.0 accoutrements are revolutionizing the social order, a development that's cause for more excitement than alarm, argues interactive telecommunications professor Shirky. He contextualizes the digital networking age with philosophical, sociological, economic and statistical theories and points to its major successes and failures. Grassroots activism stands among the winners—Belarus's flash mobs, for example, blog their way to unprecedented antiauthoritarian demonstrations. Likewise, user/contributor-managed Wikipedia raises the bar for production efficiency by throwing traditional corporate hierarchy out the window. Print journalism falters as publishing methods are transformed through the Web. Shirky is at his best deconstructing Web failures like Wikitorial, the
Los Angeles Times's attempt to facilitate group op-ed writing. Readers will appreciate the Gladwellesque lucidity of his assessments on what makes or breaks group efforts online: Every story in this book relies on the successful fusion of a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain with the users. The sum of Shirky's incisive exploration, like the Web itself, is greater than its parts.
(Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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'Clay has long been one of my favorite thinkers on all things Internet -- not only is he smart and articulate, but he's one of those people who is able to crystallize the half-formed ideas that I've been trying to piece together into glittering, brilliant insights that make me think, yes, of course, that's how it all works' - Cory Doctorow, co-editor of Boing Boing and author of, Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present " 'In story after story, Clay masterfully makes the connections as to why business, society and our lives continue to be transformed by a world of net-enabled social tools. His pattern-matching skills are second to none' Ray Ozzie, Microsoft Chief Software Architect
With newfangled technology like cell-phone photography and Internet bloggery, the course of human events is entering a new epoch, a networking guru informs us.Today, active groups can form where such formations were once impossible, declares Shirky (Interactive Telecommunications Group/NYU). Such modern configurations of power based on the free exchange of information can change society. So toss out all those old organization charts: The Internet, according to the author's facts, figures and theories, offers organization without management, networking without hierarchy. There is no institutional overhead, no cost in failure. Now we can publish before editing, Wikipedia being the prime example. In this new modality, victims of an abusive priest find redress together, stay-at-home moms consult communally, networking terrorists plot evil and anorexic teens confer on ways to starve. Collective action is almost effortless, and evanescent flash-mob events are easy to organize, often to the consternation of authorities. Viral networking can spread like the flu, distant conversation is as simple as pecking on a keyboard and everyone can be a journalist, a publisher, an encyclopedia editor. Shirky, with his illustrative anecdotes, provides back stories for latter-day groupies who log onto Flickr, Meetup, Groklaw and those sometimes fleeting wikis. He clearly applies the theories of power-law distribution and collective action, though as the discussion turns to Coasean Theory or the thoughts of Vilfredo Pareto it leans a bit toward the didactic. All that's needed, says the author, is the promise of a useful outcome, appropriate tools and agreement of participants to afford a platform for networking groups, like Archimedes, to move the world.Some wise observations amidst a predominantly old-news text. (Kirkus Reviews)