here comes everybody the power of organizing without organizations

I see this with my students in a seminar on the production of social media tools. With social tools, it is very often the opposite. We’re used to the CIO being presented with two lists: Product A has 17 features, and Product B has 32 features, so B must be better. Shirky: There is no million dollars to be spent on experimenting with this stuff to see how it goes these tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring. That feels a little out of tune with the grassroots nature of social media, doesn’t it?

He spoke with CIO Insight senior writer Edward Cone about the impact of social media on the enterprise this is a lightly-edited version of their conversation.ĬIO Insight: IT people say they want a familiar experience when it comes to buying and implementing Web 2.0 products–a feature-rich stack of software, delivered by an established vendor. Shirky, a consultant and author, is an adjunct professor at NYU’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program, where he focuses on the intersection of technology and sociology. Web 2.0 tools have “altered the old limits on the size, sophistication and scope of unsupervised effort” required to communicate effectively between and among groups, with big implications for institutions and the people who manage them. “When we change the way we communicate, we change society,” he writes.

Clay Shirky’s new book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations (Allen Lane, February 28, 2008), looks at the Internet’s impact on the way people work together.

Here comes everybody the power of organizing without organizations