Clay Shirky's new book, Cognitive Surplus, about what we should do with our spare time and skills. Rather than sit around watching TV, like my generation did, people now can do collective action, thanks to the Internet.
"Social production is the creation of value by a group for its members, using neither price signals nor managerial oversight to coordinate participants' efforts." [p. 118] Shirky gives tips on how best to accomplish this social production. Community, cost, clarity, and culture are four things needed for social production, which Shirky delineates. It's a useful book to help figure out what is happening in this new culture where people are interconnected around the world.
Thanks to the Internet, "we can now turn massive aggregations of small contributions into things of lasting value." [p. 161] More and more we see this everywhere.
Internet Collective Action is people organizing in a nonhierarchical manner to accomplish a particular goal. The reward is in the doing, and how much or how little anyone participates is completely voluntary, depending on their abilities and commitment to the goal. By this process amazing things can be accomplished. ICA will grow so long as the Internet is free. http://www.lisamcpherson.org/pc.htm is an example of ICA.
No comments:
Post a Comment