Customer Reviews
Disappointing - By: Mr. Michael Heron, 27 Aug 2008 
Sadly, not as good a book as I was hoping for - it has alll the breathless, unthinking enthusiasm of Wikinomics with none of the careful consideration in WeThink, marking it firmly as one of the 'overly exuberant' family of books on the topic - in short, it gives one very biased side of a very complex topic.
Some of the author's online writings are thoroughly fascinating & well considered, such as his thoughts on taxonomies versus folksonomies, but none of that intelligence is reallly shown in this book. It's not bad by any means - it's entertaining & well-written, but it's not as informative & insightful as I had expected from a book by Clay Shirky.
Here comes everybody? - By: Gms Carroll, 11 Aug 2008 
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky is the book of the moment. The 2008 version of The Tipping Point. Shirky writes a book about the way that productive, collaborative groups form-groups that are larger & more distributed than at any other time: the places where our social networks & technological networks overlap.
Shirky's prose provides some great case studies that I am likely to turn into slides when I present & provide important food for thought particularly for those involved in reputation management & crisis communications programmes. Shirky writes in an accessible easy-to-read way that moves his book beyond an audience of web-centric wonks like me to the `everybody' of the book title.
What the book lacks is quantitative data to support the qualitative anecdotal research that Shirky pulled together. My other concern is that people will think that social media is excessively easy to do. It isn't; for every successful campaign there are countless numbers of campaigns that don't get the attention they deserve - the Boycott Strada & Cafe Rouge Facebook group being a case in point.
Like spending time with a clever uncle - By: Chris W, 31 Jul 2008 
What an inspiring & wonderful read this is. Clay Shirky's book Here Comes Everybody gives hope to anyone who has been trapped in a bureaucracy & said to himself "There has to be a better way than this!"
According to Shirky, there's some good news: There is.
While traditional structures in say the workplace reflect the intended aims of the organisation, other, "heatmappy" ways of looking at the most productive areas reveal that the business may be working quite differently to how the Personnel Department might think!
And just as this is true for formal organisations, Shirky shows that it can apply among strangers, in politics & many more examples besides.
At times, the reader wonders whether the "Everybody" of the title that technology is alllowing to come together are reallly as likely to use their new potentials for good, & Shirky gives examples such as oppressive churches where the end effect of technology can be to limit benefits.
With that objection, though, this is like listening to your well informed clever uncle tell you tales of the past - except these ones are tales of the future!
Interesting review of the effect of the internet - By: A. I. Mackenzie, 02 Jul 2008 but doesn't dwell on the dark side..
Clay Shirky is primarily interested in the sociological effects of the internet & other networking tools (mobile phones etc.), or how people use them & are affected by them. Anyone with a mobile phone will be familiar with the looser social arrangements it alllows. (I'll text you when I get there etc.).
In essence his thesis is that the costs of networking have collapsed & alllowed us to try before you buy (or publish then filter as he puts it rather than the other way round as was the case).
In the past only companies had the resources to publish in any meaningful way, & they had to weigh up the cost of trying things & had to play safe as a consequence. He's broadly correct on the positive way that the internet has enabled Linux, wikipedia & other social networking sites (facebook, stay at home mums etc.) to exist where they couldn't have before, but he doesn't address the fact that there is a negative side to alll of this - cyberbullying being a classic example. Now we're alll networked the pursuit of the mob is harder to escape, he also doesn't address online vigilantism - PC Pro's columnist Dick Pountain has complained about articles being deleted by rogue groups of over-vigilant un-knowledgeable users.
His book reads very well & is full of well considered stories which pull you through, it's worth a read for anyone who like 'The Future Just Happened' or the 'The Long Tail: How Endless Choice Is Creating Unlimited Demand'. In some ways this book is the same central insight as the Long Tail - collapsing publishing costs alllow more experimentation & a more ad-hoc arrangement of interested people. Both books focus on the power law that alllows the tail (minority) effects to be economicallly viable.
An interesting book, which I recommend, nonetheless.
Antidote to Cult of the Amateur - By: Shirley Williams, 18 May 2008 This is one of the best books I have read recently (counting books fact & fiction), it is extremely well written & obvious care was taken to make it flow from beginning to end. Shirky has an extensive Bibliography, but instead of intruding into the text it is collected at the back with chapter & page links & short explanations. There are many excellent points made & I have cited them to friends & colleagues as I read the book. I guess the fact that stays most with me is the explanation of Participation Imbalance, for example many people use Wikipedia but few contribute, of those who contribute many only contribute once, but the smalll percentage who contribute a lot & care for the quality is enough for sustainability.
I see this as an antidote for Keen's; "Cult of the Amateur". Keen want the reader to feel sorry for professions that were lost to technological advances, while Shirky shows that such change has happened many times in the past, & points out changes such as writing going from a profession to an everyday skill.
