Clay Shirky

In Clay Shirky’s book, “Here Comes Everybody” the author talks about telecommunications from a philosophical, sociological, and economical point view. He even explains how our life due to the usage of the web has transformed by being incorporated into our jobs, home lives, and society. He further dives into the topics of technological tools such as blogs, wikis, and web 2.0’s and proves how they are evolving society by making this much more easier and how it’s damaging society by making people lazy. Print Journalism is also discussed as being reduced due to easy publishing methods made by the web (i.e. blogs). Shirky discusses his dislike for certain collaborative projects such as Wikitorial labeling it a web failure. Groups are helpful and effective but can break if there is no solid fair leadership especially online. Examples are brought up in the book such as Belarus’s flash mobs in which the author displays how blogging has no limits and how it has an authority within the web community which is basically modern day society.

“Communications tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technology boring” states Shirky which is very agreeable. History has shown us that every time a new technological device or system pops up it affects a certain class of people such as web publishing and how its effecting book and magazine publishers and journalist that’s when all of a sudden old communications are brought back into the scene of thought. Shirky makes it clear that this is nothing new in fact he illustrates the story of Johannes Trithemius an Abbot for an example. In the 14th century Johannes Trithemius wanted his book to reach a audience from afar but could not with the slow process of reproducing books by hand so eventually he had his book printed. His fellow scribes suffered and their hard work went unvalued because printing like the internet reduced the cost of having a book manufactured.

History is basically repeating itself and so is Shirky,the author seems to be repetitive. He even attacks in his book a writer named Sven Birkets who wrote an op-ed for the Boston Guide stating that certain individuals were writing book reviews for one another instead of reading his book reviews written by him. The book broadens a view of the same way the printing press abolished certain aspects of the scribe’s written words; blogging, wikis, and web 2.0’s are abolishing traditional publishing. Large institutions are crumbling economically due to the internet’s reduces in cost and is therefore affecting the working class consisting of journalists, publishers, and directors. The result is not the end of “real work” but at the same time it does not mean the beginning of everybody working together.

Shirky in my opinion is arguing that the professionals and the consumers will be classified as the same. The turning point is that the consumer will capitalize maybe even more than the professional due to low cost, easy free access, and enhanced publishing and communications technology. The consumer will be the producer, director, and publisher just with a couple of clicks on the profitable websites. The 20 years and plus hard worker and the master degree educated still have their positions in society. The only difference is now the 4 year blogger turned web publisher and the 3 times a day Wikipedia user turned advertiser for major web companies or maybe for their own business are standing side by side and neck to neck with them. The “lazy society” is also the hard working in being creative, graphic, and entertaining society who want to bring what they have on the table to their audience but in an affordable way. It’s not about being rich or having billions of money anymore with this new generation of internet users, publishers, and business owners it’s diversity, entertainment, etc; that is why large institutions are crumbling economically and are forced into minimizing cost in their productions. The consumers have turned into producers their selves and truthfully do not need the larger institutions as much as before. The consumer knows who they want to interest and how to do it and how to go about it because they have the same common interest with their audience it’s as if they are looking into a huge mirror.