[ExI] A critical book you should all read

Jef Allbright jef at jefallbright.net
Thu Oct 9 14:07:57 UTC 2008


On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 10:22 PM, hkhenson <hkhenson at rogers.com> wrote:
>
> _Here Comes Everybody_ by Clay Shirky.
>
> Does anyone on this list have a personal connection to Clay?  I would really
> like to talk to him.
>
> I am not sure his insights would allow social engineering, but the should
> keep us from being surprised at how things develop.

The book's key idea, that the economics of the web -- the decreasing
cost of increasing connections in terms of increasingly fine-grained
similarities -- promotes increasingly synergistic collaborations,
should be nothing new to denizens of the Extropy list.

What I find more telling, and ironic, is that despite the book's
message and the already rapid rise in popularity of electronic
editions of many **other** books, this author has chosen to
**restrict** dissemination to hardcover dead-tree mode.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but one would do well to
consider any message within the broader context.

- Jef



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