Institute For The Future

Capsule Review of Clay Shirky's "Here Comes Everybody"

Oh, the irony.

 

I've been trying to read Clay Shirky's new book on social software and online groups, "Here Comes Everybody" for about the last 3 months. However, everytime I crack it open and start digging into this very thoughtful and fast-paced critique of the group economy, I am interrupted by some incoming email or IMs (the original Gen X-er social networks), tweets, or the recollection of some unfinished Wikipedia edit or blog entry.

 

So today, I finally shut myself off in one of the few places I can still concentrate, the New York Public Library main branch, and skimmed through the bulk of the book. I deeply respect Clay's ability to put names to things that are out there in plain sight, but haven't yet been seen, as well as his willingness to provide an East Coast intellectual's counterpoint to the breathless self-indulgence of Silicon Valley tool-builders. But I think Tech Horizon's clients are better served just watching a few of Clay's recent media appearances on Colbert and elsewhere, than tackling this significant tome.

 

Here are my big takeaways:

 

*Groups are the new consumers - at a lot of IFTF workshops, our clients inevitably start talking about consumers. I'm never going to let them do that again. Not a single one of you is directly engaging consumers anymore. It's all filtered, multiple times, by groups that shape their views.

 

*Groups are also the new corporation and labor union and.... - It took reading this book for me to see how bottom-up groups can do everyday, practical kinds of things. BY that I mean, work, instead of chatting, whining, or goofing off. It does seem convincing that we are moving into an age in which, bit by bit, older institutions are going to be supplanted by self-organized groups that perform similar functions. Clay summarizes this really well: "The scope of work that can be done by noninstitutional groups is a profound challenge to the status quo." Implications: unless you reinvent yourself, you're cooked. Gen Xers aren't going to join today's AARP, they're going to create their own personalized advocacy groups at a more organic scale.

 

*Conversations aren't content - buried in the rather incoherent lurching to and fro of Chapter 4 is a great diatribe on page 49 that essentially boils down to the idea that much "user-generated media" is just overheard "conversations". Again, something that's widely discussed in our forecaster circle, but Clay offers some nice language and metaphors to help us really get it.

 

The big shortcoming of this book though is the lack of really well thought-out conclusions at the end. I suspect in a way what Clay is saying is, "hire me as a consultant", and I believe many of you already have. That's fine, but for the rest of us (and that includes your colleagues inside and outside your company) I would have expected a little bit more openness and giving away from a book on this topic.

 

What I'd use this book for is some fresh language to build stories and presentations to help your colleagues really -get- social networks and the group economy from an intuitive point of view. But, like the processes described in the book, you're going to have to do a lot of "filtering" to digest it for them.