Clay Shirky’s 2008 book, “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations” is not a book – it’s a love letter, a tome to the power of social media (albeit a far and balanced one).  Subsequently, the following “review” (for lack of a better word) is a love letter in return, from me to Shirky.

When I began my studies as a graduate student in the Master of Communication in Digital Media program at the University of Washington, in my very first course, awkwardly named something like “Research Methodologies for Digital Media” – I cannot remember exactly what it was called, but some students cleverly nicknamed it “Research 2.0″ (get it? like Web 2.o, only smarter), the very first book we were asked to look at was Shirky’s “Everybody”.  Since what you are reading here is my very last book review in the program – expounding now upon the item for Kathy Gill’s Net Economics course a little over a year later – as the opportunity presented itself, I felt I ought to revisit “Everybody”.  I’m doing so not only to see how my understanding of the book might have changed after continued in-depth education on all things digital media here at the MCDM, but perhaps also to see if the very things Shirky writes about – sharing, collaborating, and taking collective action in the digital world – have become realities for me during the course of my education.  And the answer is ‘yes’, they have, in the most beautiful way possible.

When I began the MCDM program, I knew, at least, that I was a storyteller, and I knew, at least, that I was working on telling stories in the digital space, meaning with the Web.  Since earning my Bachelor’s from USC in 2004, I had annually produced short videos and authored DVD versions to give to friends and the people I made them with.  When I discovered YouTube, things radically changed for me because now I had a venue in which to share my little creations.  When I joined Myspace and Yahoo! Groups I suddenly had an on-line collaboration platform – a social network – where I could find other filmmakers, performers, and storytellers to collaborate with on new video projects.  And, although I didn’t know it at the time, I was one of perhaps millions of people who, without any real hierarchical governing body or officially certified and organized industrial sanction, was actively taking part in a global collective action that was completely changing the face of the media content production world.  And why were we all doing this?  Simply because we could.  Nevertheless, it was totally unbeknownst to me the scale or importance of what it was I was involved in.  It had no label, at the time, for me.

Reading from Shirky’s “Everybody” finally helped me understand what it was that I was collectively participating in and finally gave me a label for it, or, really, a modus operandi for myself.  “Everybody”, along, of course, with the overall educational experience of coming in to the MCDM program, has everlastingly provided me with an explanation for and a means of identifying what it was I was up to in this post-undergraduate on-line world.  Prior to Shirky, the closest I had come to some loose cognition of what all of this playing around in the digital sandbox was was in the work of Henry Jenkins at MIT, who, as a self-described “Aca-Fan” (meaning, academic researcher and pop-culture enthusiast), had been working to define the process by which fans of any particular pop-culture phenomenon (say, Star Wars) were co-opting and commodifying anew (say Star Wars fan videos) their beloved prior texts, creating a new “participatory culture” (see Jenkins, 2006).  I knew that I was taking part in some element of that (especially because I didn’t know anything about the concept of “copyright infringement” – and now, sadly, I know too much!) but I didn’t really think about the how of it all.  What Jenkins did for me is help me to define myself as a “New Media Producer” – I was producing videos with a heavily memetic co-option of all that Web and pop culture I was familiar and enamored with (I made movies with titles like “Revenge of the Jocks” and “Epic Wingman“), and I was uploading them to a new medium.  But, here’s where “Everybody” comes in.  Thankfully, It defined the how of it all for me, and the how was social media.  Understanding the how has helped me to define myself as a New Media Producer working in social media, a personal brand and a unique voice in the digital space ready to tell stories with purpose in my post-graduate world.

So, this is why I love Shirky – his writing defines what I am.  His book, at least how I interpret it, really sets in place the three pillars of social media:

• Sharing
• Collaborating
• Taking collective action

Whether its thousands of eggheads passionately crafting Wikipedia entries on everything from Lingual frenulum to World War II, or just a few dozen people helping to recover a woman’s lost cell phone, social media has exhibited a power and a promise never before seen in the mass communications era (and let’s go ahead and date that back to, say, the invention of the telegraph).  By eliminating barriers of time and geographic distance with increasingly more evolved technological determinism, social media services and applications empower Jill and Joe Everbody to accomplish more efficiently the work of what otherwise would have been the old entrenched forces of a rigid industrial economy.  As Shirky points out, social production flattens and dismantles the old hierarchies of business (Shirky, 2008).  The Web, with it’s Facebooks and Twitters and Wikis, creates a network for making things happen (in my case, content creation – e.g., storytelling) without a need for top-down structures.  Naturally, this scares the ever-living crap out of the old guard, the Microsofts and New York Times and Republican Parties of the world.  But, I guess I really get a kick out of being a part of that!

Shirky writes with real insight and respect for the power of social media in “Here Comes Everybody”.  He considers the pros and the cons but astutely inclines the reader towards understanding the positive effect.  Not everything is perfect in, or perfectly accomplished through, social media, and Shirky discusses that, undoubtedly.  But, one really gets the feeling that Shirky is on social media’s side.  I’ve joined that side, too, and I recommend not only his “love letter” to social media, but also taking part in it, to anyone.  That’s my love letter in return.

References

Jenkins, H. (2006). About me. In Confessions of an Aca-fan: The official weblog of Henry Jenkins. Retrieved 7 December 2009, from http://henryjenkins.org/aboutme.html.

Shirky, C. (2008). Here Comes Everybody: The power of organizing without organizations. New York: Penguin Press.

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