Name: Here comes everybody
ISBN: 9780143114949

Here comes everybody

A revelatory examination of how the wildfirelike spread of new forms of social interaction enabled by technology is changing the way humans form groups and exist within them, with profound long-term economic and social effects-for good and for ill A handful of kite hobbyists scattered around the world find each other online and collaborate on the most radical improvement in kite design in decades. A midwestern professor of Middle Eastern history starts a blog after 9/11 that becomes essential reading for journalists covering the Iraq war. Activists use the Internet and e-mail to bring offensive comments made by Trent Lott and Don Imus to a wide public and hound them from their positions. A few people find that a world-class online encyclopedia created entirely by volunteers and open for editing by anyone, a wiki, is not an impractical idea. Jihadi groups trade inspiration and instruction and showcase terrorist atrocities to the world, entirely online. A wide group of unrelated people swarms to a Web site about the theft of a cell phone and ultimately goads the New York City police to take action, leading to the culprit's arrest. With accelerating velocity, our age's new technologies of social networking are evolving, and evolving us, into new groups doing new things in new ways, and old and new groups alike doing the old things better and more easily. You don't have to have a MySpace page to know that the times they are a changin'.

What Hacker News says

jasodeSep 2016

The writer (Sangeet Paul Choudary) doesn't mention Clay Shirky but as far as I can tell, Clay has written the most essays about web communities and scaling problems:

http://shirky.com/writings/community_scale.html

http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/herecomese...

https://www.amazon.com/Here-Comes-Everybody-Organizing-Organ...

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swsieberOct 2015

That's a very good point. I think I phrased it that way because I believe it's part of a bigger issue at hand - namely that we have all these things reinforcing our bad habits and bad traits, and we don't really pay attention to it since it's so ubiquitous.

I can't think of many technological solutions to these types of problems - I say that because trying to ban those types of software generally is like playing whack-a-mole. You get rid of one and another one pops up.

The real solution is that people have to police themselves when interacting with technology - being judicious. I wish there was a good way to make that part of our culture.

Reading "Here Comes Everybody" is what inspired this line of though in me.

Edit: Especially since reading through the rest of the article: what's happening on NextDoor was happening on other sites: email groups and yahoo groups. I think there's bigger hubbub about next door because it's more visible.

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mrecOct 2014

Is an email "content"? Is a blog post? A HN/Reddit/whatever comment?

I don't think the old stereotype of "consumers" as some sort of purely passive livestock is especially useful any more. Clay Shirky's old but very readable "Here Comes Everybody" makes a similar case at much greater and more articulate length.

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bhouselApr 2011

Hey PG, have you read Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody? It has lots in there about the problems inherent in big communities, especially in how they function on the internet.

The later parts of the book (chapter 8 and beyond) seem applicable to the problems HN is facing.

PM me if you want, I'll send you my copy of the book.

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rmcDec 2010

* the government is learning what the music and movie industries were forced to learn years ago: it's easy to copy and distribute digital files. That's what's different between the 1970s and today. Amassing and releasing that many documents was hard in the paper and photocopier era; it's trivial in the Internet era. *

Great point.

If you're interested in 'how the internet/computers change things that were impossible/hard', then I recommend Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirkey.

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kjbekkelundAug 2010

My favourite books read lately are Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky and Perrotta's Metaprogramming Ruby. If you haven't read Free by Chris Anderson, it's also highly recommended. It's just an article, but Anarconomy by the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies was a very interesting read (http://www.cifs.dk/doc/medlemsrapporter/MR0309UK.pdf).

If you are willing to check out an audiobook, World War Z is truly an amazing book. Absolutely the best audiobook I have heard so far.

Enjoy your weeks off!

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