I know exactly what he means when he talks about getting answers right when you need them and explained in terms you understand as I started out using one of the less friendly “flavors” of Linux and community forums were my best friend. So, I was a little disappointed about how little Shirkey spent on covering this issue.

But that made me think about the title of this book. Here Comes Everybody. Shirky doesn’t really mean everybody. In fact, he’s only referring to those of us who have online broadband connections with personal computers. Shirky’s view is that the system manages to govern itself. I wonder if we would see more of the Tragedy of the Commons if everyone were truly involved.

Shirky has a rosy outlook that runs throughout the book. Failure For Free (Chapter 10) suggests that Meetup’s success is based on numerous failures of groups forming. It seems to be a bit of a stretch to suggest that a company that has successfully attracted large numbers of people to its platform would consider the lack of interest for a group (or groups) on that platform a “failure”. “All that’s required to take advantage of this market are passionate users and an appetite for repeated public failure.” (237)

It seems that all it takes is a smart platform, low participation barriers and good marketing. For Meetups, failure would be the building of a platform where no one played. Here Comes Nobody.

The gatekeeper VS gate watcher view of media is pined upon, with similar conclusions to Bruns. Shirky previously mentions the fact that anyone can be a publisher of knowledge and the idea of the publisher is being dismantled, or written off as meaningless. This creates a new definition of audience, or at least a redefinition of what a broadcast media’s audience can be regarded as. Some people post on their blog just for friends to read, some people post more general things hoping to get a large fan following.

The idea of mass content creation is also mentioned, along with the idea that industry folk are becoming obsolete in this digital age in the same way as scribes when the printing press came about. It could be likened to scribes creating laws against certain works being printed.

One very interesting point; he mentions that although two way (or three/four way, etc) communication can be easily achieved; we shouldn’t go suppose this is the end of communication barriers. Fame and other social issues are still very much in play. Oprah doesn’t have the time to read all her fans emails, and a group of two people will agree upon a movie far faster than a group of ten.

Shirky’s points out that networks like Flickr don’t organize groups to together, but rather gives users the tooks in which they can then form and mediate group movements that once would have been possible. In chapter 2, we read about the Mermaid Parade, which takes place in New York City. Many of the participants wanted a way to get in-touch with others, but did not have a central method of doing that. Well by many of them up-loaded their photos of the parade to Flickr, they were did not coordinate an organization for the event, but by their photos being typed with the same tags, they were able to network themselves together with others of the same interest.

Wikipedia is another example of this. Most view Wikipedia as just another form of information that lets user add to or correct entries that have already been created. It has also been used for more. As we read in chapter 5, “Within minutes of the bombs going off in London transit system, someone created a Wikipedia page called “7 July 2005 London bombings.” (116) The entry was constantly edited throughout the day as new data came in, thus bringing people together to help inform other and create a bit of new information not just for that day, but for the future also.

Still through all the good that is brought with these networks, one has to ask whether or not all of this freedom which society has gained thanks to the new digital revolution really a good thing. Sure we are able to inform and get information out there at a much faster rate, but how are we truly able to filter all of the good from the bad? When an event is organized through a network like Myspace or Facebook, just how much control will the organizer have given how many people may see it? Where as we the people are given more power so that we can be heard, we have to hope that we won’t lose control or abuse the new tools that we’ve come to enjoy and depend upon.

Then comes the big question: But who filters through all the mindless nonsense so we can have quality information. Chapter 4, “Publish, Then Filter,” answers that: we do. Once again, I see the flaws in the “old ways” of journalism. Look at Iran, blocking more sites than they are allowing right now. Gate keeping is serious business and can turn into censorship, but an overabundance of information almost makes it more difficult to find the important information. If it takes six hours to wade through all the media related to a topic of interest just to get to a study, who’s going to bother?

“In a world where a dozen editors…can decide whether to run for kill a national story, information…may not be published….” (65). Exactly! But in a world where everyone publishes and nobody is considered a better source, information may not be received. There is currently a symbiotic relationship between professional and citizen journalists – professionals get the sources they can by deadline and publish the stories, citizens read the stories, know something about the topics and get further information that changes the stories, then professionals come back at the stories and the cycle begins again. Take out either of those and you get a system that cannot get information to the masses because it is either short on space (traditional) or an ocean of random facts (citizen). It takes both to make the most valuable information delivery system.

Shirky writes that “Digital means of distributing words and images have robbed newspapers of the coherence they formerly had, revealing the physical object of the newspaper as a merely provisional solution; now every article is its own section” (59). Yes, and every article has the potential to become important and useful information, IF we know where to find it. For now, we can still hit the majors online to get the traditional media versions of digital delivery, but if newspapers continue to lay off “professional” reporters we will have to decide which bloggers we trust and which are just not getting it right. And suddenly, if we want the news, WE have to go get it.

If “the old bargain of the newspaper … has now ended” (60), how do we get news we don’t normally consider? How many people go to the endangered animal database or the town death records on a daily basis? Do any more go and search topics outside of their lives online? Again, this has the potential to lead to a preaching to a preaching to the choir system.

The answer he gives, of course, is that there are both bad and good outcomes to the increased ability to form groups, and your answer depends on where you stand: “anyone inclined to see the good effects of the coming changes can assure a positive value… while anyone who believes the world is going to hell in a handbasket can support that conclusion by the evidence (p. 297).” This is an odd conclusion coming from someone who throughout the book has done a good job of revealing the larger issues involved in our new group-forming abilities, and the “it’s all relative” statement feels a little like a copout. His examples of the pro-anorexia girls and terrorist groups—the downside of the network—were not nearly as deeply explored as the more positive or neutral examples of group forming, which leaves little doubt about Shirky’s own perspective. It’s obviously a well-thought-out and developed one, and we hope he is correct.

The idea that “tools are simply a way of channeling existing motivation” is a compelling one, a firmly instrumentalist and non-techno-determinist view. It would be hard, though, to point to a moment when Shirky tries to get outside of the current of technology and question it in a fundamental way.

To return more to the beginning, Shirky claims that new patterns of socialization and group-forming are possible because of access to new communications tools. “But mere tools aren’t enough” (17) he reminds us. Not only do we need the means (which we already have), but we also need the motivation. In each rung of the “ridiculously easy group-forming” ladder, the benefit to the individual self seems to diminish as organization becomes more complex and more of a challenge, from sharing > cooperation/collaboration > collective action (49). In the last rung, the motivation for the group is less self-interest and more “shared vision” (53).

Shirky seems to write for an audience that needs a wake-up call—the kind of audience that would wonder if new forms of sharing and collaboration are good or bad in the first place. Such changes are neither good nor bad—they just are. But, the effects of the changes on digital non-natives (like Shirky) is very real. “In the last fifteen years, I’ve had to unlearn [a million] things … because they have stopped being true” (304). What is happening to the world is nothing short of a revolution that will affect all institutions. Again, Shirky enjoys his non-answerable questions: “When will the change happen? What will change? The only two answers we can rule out are never, and nothing” (23). Notably, the new media do not COMPLETELY replace the old. In a discussion of Wikpedia, he says, “Like everything described in this book, a wiki is a hybrid of tool and community” (136). The human motivation factor, discussed above, can defeat or give life to any new technology.