The Innovation Reading Circle aims to help develop theory around innovation through rich, high-level and well-informed public discussion around key and related texts and discourses... [Read on in Objectives]

14: Democratising technology

Here Comes Everybody, the power of organising without organizations by Clay Shirky (Allen Lane, 2008) [Order from Amazon.co.uk]

In Here Comes Everybody Clay Shirky argues that we now have communications tools that are flexible enough to match our social capabilities, and we are witnessing the rise of new ways of coordinating action that take advantage of that change. He contends that it is easier for groups to self-assemble, and for individuals to contribute to group effort without requiring the overhead of formal management, and that this has created a challenge to traditional institutional forms. He argues that the mass media is being amateurised; that business models are being challenged by new tools allow large groups to collaborate, taking advantage of non-financial motivations and allowing differing (and economically unviable) levels of contribution; and that the institutional monopoly on large-scale coordination is being undermined. He also believes that social tools can amplify social dilemmas as a direct effect. He argues that as the cost of failure tends to zero, new social systems have to tolerate enormous amounts of failure, and concludes that the future belongs to those who take the present for granted.

Clay Shirky divides his time between consulting, teaching, and writing on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. He has written extensively about the internet since 1996. He has had regular columns in publications includnig Business 2.0 and FEED, and his writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, Wired, Release 1.0, Computerworld, and IEEE Computer. Shirky is an adjunct professor in NYU’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), where he teaches courses on the interrelated effects of social and technological network topology. Mr. Shirky frequently speaks on emerging technologies at fora including the PC Forum, the Internet Society, the Department of Defense. Shirky also consult on the rise of decentralized technologies with clients including Nokia, GBN, the Library of Congress, the Highlands Forum, the Markle Foundation, and the BBC. From 1999–2001Mr. Shirky was a partner at the investment firm The Accelerator Group, before which he was chief technology officer at the New York-based Web media and design firm Site Specific. He is a former Vice-President of the New York chapter of the EFF. Shirky graduated from Yale College with a degree in art, working initially as a theatre director and designer. Mr. Shirky's writings are archived at shirky.com, and he currently runs the N.E.C. mailing list for his writings on networks, economics, and culture. [Read on on Shirky.com.]

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We-Think: The Power of Mass Creativity by Charles Leadbeater (Profile, 2008)

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams (Atlantic Books, 2007)