Here Comes Everybody, Here Goes Anything

Last week I reviewed Pat Rigby’s manual on using Web 2.0 to mobilize people. In my review I made the off-hand comment that Rigby’s guidebook is great because it doesn’t waste time explaining why new media like Facebook or Twitter are important, but goes right into using these tools. In truth, I still feel like web 2.0 technology is a fact of life and not an idea or concept that needs to be pushed. But allow me, briefly, to eat my words. I may think I know why Facebook and Twitter are such a big deal: everybody’s using it. But to truly understand why online social media is such a transformative technology, I needed to read Clay Shirkey’s, Here Comes Everybody. In this seminal work –OK, there probably aren’t too many books specifically on this subject-- Mr. Shirkey explains what exactly it is we are going through and how, through a historical lens, this is nothing short of a watershed moment; pivotal point in the narrative of human social interaction.

I make reference to history because Mr. Shirkey himself draws from historical analogies to illustrate how history is shaped by precisely these types of events. It’s a key approach to showing the reader how momentous the advent of social media is. All around us are modern day scribes awaiting redundancy by this new equivalent of the printing press. The book’s opening sets the stage for this analysis perfectly. The story of a missing cell phone in New York and the events surrounding its eventual recovery are delivered with a perfect sense of comedy, gravitas and general incredulity from the writer and from the story’s main protagonists. From the bumbling police, the confused family of the cell phone bandit, the original owner and even the online hordes who, through their collective conscience, shepherd the cell phone toward its original owner, the story illustrates Shirkey’s central argument; people are not fully aware of how online organization is changing our society. The classic analogy about not seeing the Forest for the trees comes to mind.

Web 2.0 technology is changing the nature of human interaction, civic participation, media and journalism. As a result, our conversations, our governments and our jobs will likely change as well. It sounds daunting, but Shirkey is neither a pessimist nor a gleeful savant. We may have fewer working journalists, but there will still be a place for experts. The opportunities for otherwise constrained initiatives or non-profit generating ideas are plenty even if that means hapless initiatives join the melee. It’s a mixed bag and its nice to have someone show you how massive the bag actually is.

A word of advice for future readers with little exposure to web 2.0. Reading this book before reading Pat Rigby’s Mobilizing Generation 2.0 offers a nice continuum. Rigby tells you practically how to use the tools, but its nice to already have a head full of Shirkey’s lessons on why these tools are so transformative.