Here Comes Everybody

Forming groups is easier than it's ever been: unpaid volunteers build Wikipedia together in their spare time, and one man with a laptop can raise an army to help recover a stolen phone. This book explores how the unifying power of the internet is changing the character of human society. Clay Shirky's international bestseller Here Comes Everybody: How Change Happens When People Come Together explores how the unifying power of the internet is changing the character of human society. Welcome to the new future of involvement. Forming groups is easier than it's ever been: unpaid volunteers build Wikipedia together in their spare time, mistreated customers can join forces to get their revenge on airlines and high street banks, and one man with a laptop can raise an army to help recover a stolen phone. The results of this new world of easy collaboration can be both good (young people defying an oppressive government with a guerrilla ice-cream eating protest) and bad (girls sharing advice for staying dangerously skinny) but it's here and, as Clay Shirky shows, it's affecting... well, everybody. For the first time, we have the tools to make group action truly a reality. And they're going to change our whole world. 'As crisply argued and as enlightening a book about the internet as has been written' Daily Telegraph 'As usable as the technology he writes about' Independent 'Clay Shirky's masterpiece ... glittering, brilliant insights that make me think, yes, of course, that's how it all works' Cory Doctorow, co-editor of Boing Boing 'Anyone interested in the vitality and influence of groups of human beings - from knitting circles, to political movements, to multinational corporations - needs to read this book' Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad is Good for You and Emergence Clay Shirky writes, teaches, and consults on the social and economic effects of the internet. A professor at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, he has consulted for Nokia, Procter and Gamble, News Corp., the BBC, the US Navy, and Lego. Over the years, his writings have appeared in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, Wired, and IEEE Computer.