Here Comes Everybody
Also known as Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
Clay Shirky's 2008 book on how internet tools let groups organise without institutions.
At a glance
Key ideas
The institutional dilemma, Coasean ceiling and floor, Below the floor …
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- Shirky looks at what happens when people get tools to do things together without traditional organisations.
- Blogging software, Flickr and Wikipedia support group action that once needed institutions.
- Because these tools cut the cost of coordinating, groups can form for work no firm would find worth its overhead.
- He also describes the mass amateurisation of journalism and photography.
Why it matters
- An account of how social tools change group action, built on Ronald Coase's theory of the firm.
Key facts
- Author
- Clay Shirky1
- Published
- 2008, Penguin Press1
- Title
- Alludes to HCE, a central figure in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake1
Key ideas
-
The institutional dilemma1
An institution spends resources managing resources, so it can do less in practice than in theory.
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Coasean ceiling and floor1
Institutions break down past a size; below a floor an activity is not worth an institution at all.
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Below the floor1
Social tools let loose groups work under the Coasean floor, as on Flickr.
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Promise, tool, bargain1
Successful groups fuse a plausible promise, an effective tool and an acceptable bargain.
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Mass amateurisation1
Anyone can publish, which unsettles who counts as a journalist or photographer.
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