Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
by Clay Shirky
The main contention of the book Here Comes Everybody, by Clay Shirky, is that coordination of groups of people leads to collaboration, which leads to collective action, and developing communications technologies are breaking the mold for how this process can occur. (50-51) Throughout the book, Shirky provides examples to highlight the role of technology and social communication technology to manage groups of people for various activities and roles.
The basic catalyst of the communication technology boom is the internet itself. Shirky says, “we are living in the middle of a remarkable increase in our ability to share, to cooperate from one another, and to take collective action, all outside the framework of traditional institutions and organizations.” (20-21) This process is facilitated by the internet. The internet is able to empower people as individuals and groups in ways that were not possible before its existence to form collective action. The applications developed have allowed an increase in new ways of gathering information by breaking down traditional barriers (22) and institutions are being forced to change in response to these new methods or they potentially become obsolete.
A major point of the book was the reasoning why we have institutions when the theory of free market makes so much sense. Coase addressed the question “why do organizations exist if markets address all needs?” He answered that question because too many relationships are difficult to facilitate and will cause more negotiations to be made, increasing the costs of the products, so organizations provide a breakdown into smaller groups (managed well) to decrease overall costs to consumers. (30) This can be true not only for businesses but for government and nonprofits as well. (43) Businesses invest in managing people because they have professionalized a needed service (based on scarcity of resources - 57), and they need to provide that service at a cost effective “price.” When managers have more personal interaction with those they manage in the hierarchy the cost of negotiations is lower and the outputs of resources is the highest. Shirky uses the example of a champagne toast to illustrate that a small group will all toast each other, but a large group will only toast those nearby, concluding that the relationships between those close by are more manageable. (29)
The Coasean ceiling is that point where the hierarchy of management can no longer cost effectively support the organization. (44) The Coasean floor refers to activities that fall below the need for institutionalism because there is someone that finds them valuable, but they are too expensive or not relevant to the masses so they are not pursued. (45) With the increase in methods for communication, many more people are focusing on activities below the Coasean floor (family events posted on Facebook, etc.) than ever before.
There are two theories introduced in the book that help describe the relationship of group members, the Birthday Paradox and The Tragedy of the Commons. The Birthday Paradox explains that there is more than an 80% chance in group of 36 that 2 people will share a birthday, but most people will not take that bet because they are thinking about themselves as individuals not how they are linked to the group (actually 600 options for pairs of birthdays with all the people). The Tragedy of the Commons is the example of sheep grazing in a common pasture. “While each person can agree that all would benefit from common restraint, the incentives of the individuals are arrayed against the outcome.” (52) This is why taxes aren’t voluntary and tips are sometimes included. At some point in a group there will be “freeriders” that benefit from the work of others without any contributions of their own to the group. Group members will think of themselves as individuals first and not the extent of the overall relationship of the group.
Wikipedia is an example of division of labor for collaboration to work successfully. (118) By individualizing a collective effort, the natural tendency for individuals to think of themselves first instead of the group is broken down. However, research has shown that the participation of users exponentially decreases after the first contributor edits the page, reaffirming the Tragedy of the Commons as an overall long term effect of a single page (125). As a whole, Wikipedia is successful because it is a collaboration of individuals sharing information collectively. (Interesting aside that Ward Cunningham invented the first wiki - meaning quick - and it was the first user editable web page - 113)
Other current examples from the book that stood out to me as relevant and interesting were:
1. The opening story about the lost Sidekick phone. Amazing that one man can obtain that much information easily about a girl that stole a phone and in less than a month have millions of people comment and harass her only to conclude by persuading the NYPD to arrest her for theft. (Chapter 1)
2. Flickr as a sharing platform to connect strangers. Local events, natural disasters, common interests, this platform allows tags on pictures that connect them with complete strangers.
3. Trent Lott’s speech about Strom Thurmond regarding his controversial presidential campaign over 50 years ago. The power of the role of the media in five short days coerced him not to seek re-election as majority leader. (63) And later on mentioned that conspiracy groups have been even more punishable than individuals because a group is considered more dangerous. (161)
The biggest shortcoming in the book was evident in Chapter 4, (titled Publish, Then Edit), because the book was published in 2008 before the exponential growth of Facebook, before Twitter was a daily used tool by everyday people, and before professional social media jobs. The chapter discusses communications technologies, but only surfaces the issues that we have now with them concerning privacy issues and what information “shared” involves. It also discusses viral videos slightly before the makers of them were becoming famous and capitalizing on simple clips (think the song “It’s Friday”); so this is on track for predicting what could happen, but the frequency of these videos going viral should be further explored.
This book relates to the class because it helps explain how group relationships are difficult to manage. A group can be a powerful force and new communication technologies encourage relationship building and group formation on a whole new plane of thought. This is posing a potential risk for governance of these relationships. How can we govern a natural voluntary relationship that is difficult to define as a risk or not? Are these relationships harmless because they are between “strangers” or in light of recent “Occupy [fill in the blank]” protests should these relationships be taken more seriously? When people voluntarily collaborate there can be a much stronger collective action as a result and these new communications technologies are allowing these relationships to grow at astounding exponential rates. There needs to be a discussion about the control and governance of this issue. The suggestions for forming groups at the end of the book were a good recommendation for managing social groups. Promise, tool, bargain is an easy to remember phrase and make sense. Promise is why they would want to join the group, tool is working out the challenges of coordinating, and bargain is setting expectations to join the group. This structure can be more easily governed.
Everyone is a journalist. This powerful statement I took away from the book is one way that it helps people think about relationships differently. “We are all generating more media than we can consume. The amount of photography, recorded material, text, the cloud of metadata that we are all leaving behind, is overwhelming.” These communications technologies are creating relationships between people that never would have been connected in the past or even five years ago. Everyone can provide any amount of information to build these relationships, but how “real” are they if only shared by a fragment of similarity between individuals? Are the million plus Twitter fans of Justin Bieber in a relationship with him or each other based on the common interest of one person and who is responsible for making that judgement? These are all questions that I never would have though I would be asking myself 10 years ago and yet I find myself engulfed in communication technology relationships with people I barely know everyday. All of this information is being shared at increasing rates, so if anything this book challenges readers to think about how this girth of information matters to people’s relationships, or if it will become obsolete when a new technology emerges.
