Here Comes Everybody: How Change Happens when People Come Together

Description

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED - IT WILL BE emailed, texted, blogged, wikied . . . Welcome to the new future of involvement. Forming groups is easier than it's ever been- unpaid volunteers can build an encyclopaedia together in their spare time, mistreated customers can join forces to get their revenge on airlines and high street banks, and one man with a laptop can raise an army to help recover a stolen phone. The results of this new world of easy collaboration can be both good (young people defying an oppressive government with a guerrilla ice-cream eating protest) and bad (girls sharing advice for staying dangerously skinny) but it's here and, as Clay Shirky shows, it's affecting . . . well, EVERYBODY. For the first time, we have the tools to make group action truly a reality. And they're going to change our whole world. 'As crisply argued and as enlightening a book about the internet as has been written' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'As usable as the technology he writes about' INDEPENDANT 'Terrifically clever' GUARDIAN 'Anyone interested in the vitality and influence of groups of human beings - from knitting circles, to political movements, to multinational corporations - needs to read this book' STEVEN JOHNSON, AUTHOR OF EVERYTHING BAD IS GOOD FOR YOU AND EMERGENCE

Clay Shirky writes, teaches, and consults on the social and economic effects of the internet, especially on places where our social and technological networks overlap. His goal is to describe the intersection of social tools and social life, helping people to understand both what's happening around them and how tools could he designed that better support social activity. A professor at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, he has consulted for Nokia, Procter and Gamble, News Corp., the BBC, the US Navy and Lego. Over the years, his writings have appeared in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, Wired, and IEEE Computer. Pivotal articles include 'Exiting Deanspace', an analysis of Howard Dean's loss of the US Democratic nomination in 2004, and how his web campaign may actually have contributed to the loss, and 'Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality', about the ways that the social dynamics of online communication tend to create great imbalances of attention. A regular keynote speaker at tech conferences, he has never believed that technology is an end in itself; rather it is our use of technology that matters.

'As crisply argued and as enlightening a book about the internet as has been written' Daily Telegraph 'As usable as the technology he writes about' Independent 'Clay Shirky's masterpiece ! brilliant insights that make me think ... that's how it all works' Cory Doctorow, co-editor of Boing Boing 'Anyone interested in the vitality and influence of groups of human beings ... needs to read this book' - Steven Johnson, author of Emergence 'Terrifically clever' Guardian 'Gordon Brown has been reading Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody, currently the book of the moment among webheads and new media obsessives.' - Matthew D'Ancona, Telegraph