Here Comes Everybody

Synopsis

In the book, Shirky recounts how social tools, such as blogging software like WordPress and Twitter, file sharing platforms like Flickr, and online collaboration platforms like Wikipedia, support group conversation and group action in a way that could previously only be achieved through institutions. Shirky argues that with the advent of online social tools, groups can form without previous restrictions of time and cost, in the same way the printing press increased individual expression, and the telephone increased communications between individuals. Shirky observes that:

"[Every] institution lives in a kind of contradiction: it exists to take advantage of group effort, but some of its resources are drained away by directing that effort. Call this the institutional dilemma--because an institution expends resources to manage resources, there is a gap between what those institutions are capable of in theory and in practice, and the larger the institution, the greater those costs."

Online social tools, Shirky argues, allow groups to form around activities 'whose costs are higher than the potential value,' for institutions. Shirky further argues that the successful creation of online groups relies on successful fusion of a, 'plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain for the user.' However, Shirky warns that this system should not be interpreted as a recipe for the successful use of social tools as the interaction between the components is too complex.

Shirky also discusses the possibility of mass amateurization that the internet allows. With blogging and photo-sharing websites, anyone can publish an article or photo that they have created. This creates a mass amateurization of journalism and photography, requiring a new definition of what credentials make someone a journalist, photographer, or news reporter. This mass amateurization threatens to change the way news is spread throughout different media outlets.

However, after publication, in an interview with Journalism.co.uk, Clay Shirky revised some of his own work by saying that "democratic legitimation is itself enough to regard aggregate public opinion as being clearly binding on the government." Shirky uses the example of the prioritization of a campaign to legalize medical marijuana on Change.gov, stating that while it was a 'net positive,' for democracy, it was not an absolute positive. He concedes that public pressure via the Internet could be another implementation method for special interest groups.

Key concepts

Coasean Ceiling/Coasean Floor

In Chapter Two, "Sharing Anchors Community", the author uses theories from the 1937 paper The Nature of the Firm by Nobel Prize–winning economist Ronald Coase which introduces the concept of transaction costs to explain the nature and limits of firms. From these theories, Shirky derives two terms that represent the constraints under which these traditional institutions operate: Coasean Ceiling and Coasean Floor.

The author argues that social tools drastically reduce transaction costs and organizing overhead, allowing loosely structured groups with limited managerial oversight to operate under the Coasean Floor. As an example, he cites Flickr, which allows groups to organically form around themes of images without the transaction costs of managerial oversight.

Promise, Tool, Bargain

In Chapter Eleven, "Promise, Tool, Bargain", Shirky states that each success story of using social tools to form groups contained within the book is an example of the complex fusion of 'a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain with the users.'

Critical response

The Bookseller declared the book one of the two "most reviewed" books over the [2008] Easter weekend, noting that the Telegraph's reviewer Dibbell found it "as crisply argued and as enlightening a book about the Internet as has been written" and that the Guardian reviewer Stuart Jeffries called it "terrifically clever" and "harrowing".

In a 2009 review, NYTimes.com contributor Liesl Schillinger called the book "eloquent and accessible" and encouraged readers to buy the book, which had recently been released in paperback.

In the Times Higher Education, Tara Brabazon, professor of Media Studies at University of Brighton, criticizes Here Comes Everybody for excluding "older citizens, the poor, and the illiterate". Brabazon also argues that the "assumption that 'we' can learn about technology from technology - without attention to user-generated contexts rather than content - is the gaping, stunning silence of Shirky's argument".