WebGyver Revisited

Here Comes Everybody / Web 3.0 / Clay Shirky

Posted by admin on January 8, 2009

So who is this guy who knows what mistakes will occur with Web 3.0 GUIs and mobile interfaces? Clay Shirky is the author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations as well as a teacher of new media at NYU.

Shirky was the guest on NPR’s Talk Of The Nation (January 8, 2009), and you can access the podcast on the NPR web site.

Here’s an excerpt from Shirky’s book (by way of the Talk Of The Nation web site):

When we change the way we communicate, we change society. The tools that a society uses to create and maintain itself are as central to human life as a hive is to bee life. Though the hive is not part of any individual bee, it is part of the colony, both shaped by and shaping the lives of its inhabitants. The hive is a social device, a piece of bee information technology that provides a platform, literally, for the communication and coordination that keeps the colony or from their shared, co-created environment. So it is with human networks; bee hives, we make mobile phones.

Check out the podcast, and who knows, you might just get interested in the book as well.