bronx book nerd 2010-05-21
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
The internet, mobile phones, technology-enabled social networks - what does it all mean? Numerous authors have taken a shot at capturing the current zeitgeist, providing its history and predicting its future. (See books like The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More and Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, for example). Of those I have read, Clay Shriky has done the best job. For each new characteristic of our technology driven society, Shirky provides a revealing history as well as an insightful interpretation of why that trait is now succeeding. For example, when he covers blogging and other forms of new journalism, he explains how professional journalism was built on the old technology which made it difficult for masses of people to get involved. Journalists were "professionals" because technology and organization limited who could become a professional. Today, virtually anyone can write and tell a story. Shirky's explanation begs the question - how many other "professions" will suffer a similar fate when technology diminishes barriers to entry or makes professional tasks accesible to the amateur - medicine? plumbing? We'll see.
As in the observation about professionalism, there are other insights that Shirky provides that can be applied beyond the context of his book. For example, when he explains how new technology has dramatically dropped the costs of organizing groups, resulting in rapid organization around sometimes even eccentric issues, Shirky notes how organizations by nature are self-consuming - i.e. some of their resources must go simply to exist. That means that these resources are not available for the organizations stated goal or objective. The reader may be familiar with this as overhead, particularly in relation to administrative costs for non-profits, who must divert a substantial part of donations simply to exist. Here again, the principle extends beyond the content of the book - e.g. in government, how much of the resources are devoted simply to keep the organization alive, and how could these costs be reduced by using new technologies?
Another insight that can also be extended is Shirky's application of the Power Law to how individuals participate in groups. Wikipedia, for example, is edited by large numbers of people. However, the vast majority provide only one or two edits; a relatively small proportion of editors provide a very large number of edits. This is not a normal distribution or the 80/20 rule, and it seems to be the way that groups have always organized and been involved - a few do the bulk of the work while the remaining add a little here and there. Again, in what other spheres does the Power Law apply and how can it be analyzed and exploited for improvements?
Finally, Shirky explains how any group involvement includes three elements - a promise, a tool and a bargain. All three must be in place and cohere with each other for groups to succeed at their tasks. The promise is what the group seeks to accomplish and it must not be too limited or too grandiose; the tool is the technology that supports the promise, as the internet supported the open source development for Linux; and the bargain is the mutual expectations among participants. Yet again, how can these insights be applied to organizing in general, to even things like office meetings?
In sum, Shirky provides insightful observations and meaningful examples of how new technology is making it easier for groups to organize, calling to question our assumptions about matters like professionalism and motivation, among others. At the same time, his observations provide principles that can be extended to other areas. For these reasons, this book is well worth reading.
