Clay Shirky's book Here Comes Everybody is proving to be a fun read. It's very reminiscent of reading Peter Drucker. Shirky, in line of Drucker uses a number of anecdotes to explain what could be tough leadership, organizational behaivor, or economic concepts so that anyone could understand them.
This book seems to be addressing the reality of our increasing interconnectedness, especially as we become more and more connected with technology and specifically the internet.
In light of recent events in Egypt, the following quotation is almost prophetic: "Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough, and I will move the world" (Shirky, 6).
The advent of our interconnectedness, social media, and cites like Flickr, YouTube, and YouNews, give new creedance to the conception of a "Hot Group," which is a group of people coming together for a short-time regarding a specific need or issue. A number of anecdotes are offered in Shirky's chapter entitled "Sharing Anchors Community," including about how the world learned about the Tsunami in SE Asia through people like you and me reporting through our pictures and blogs. "Hot Groups" formed over people looking for people by posting pictures and commentary of their search for loved ones (Shirky, 36).
Sources:
Jean Lipman-Blumen & Harold J. Leavitt, Hot Groups: Seeding Them, Feeding Them, & Using Them to Ignite Your Organization, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999).
Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations, (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2008).
More people need to make important ideas more approachable to others not intensively studying them! I'm glad to see examples of writers that you are studying who are doing that.
ReplyDeleteAlso, that quote above (or similar versions of it) are attributed to Archimedes, one of the more prolific inventors and mathematicians of all time. Whenever I see that quote, that's what I think about, and it's interesting to see how well it applies in modern social media and social movements too.
Thanks for clarifying the Archimedes quotation Tim! Also, I cannot agree with you more about making important ideas accesible. From making complicated theological arguments comprehendable in a sermon, to being able to relate the complexcity of a blackhole discernably to a non-astronomy or physics major... its the age old question, how to take what you know from a particular dimension or field and taking the key insights to the rest of the world so that they can share in the knowledge. It's kind of the whole point to Wikipedia I believe.
ReplyDelete