Clay Shirky: Let’s Get Started

Just spoke with Clay Shirky, who hinted at a few of the things he’s going to be discussing at Supernova.  The highlights…

• Here Comes Everybody could be summed up in five words, "group action just got easier."  Now it’s time to think about what happens when group action actually occurs.

• We talked quite a bit about the types of things that could "happen" when people start working together.  Interestingly, one can think about a couple of different ways that individuals can work together when they interact with a larger organization. 

• The first way (and perhaps the "default" way) is that individuals could work together to "stop" something that an organization is doing.  In other words, many grassroots collaboration efforts can be broadly grouped together under the heading of "protest" movements. 

• What might be more interesting is to examine what happens when groups form to perform a "start" activity.  That is, let’s start to think about the case when individuals begin to collaborate to create something new, and to start a novel set of activities, as opposed to banding together to "stop" something that is already extant.

This is going to be a fun conference.  More here.

photo credit: joi ito