In Clay Shirky's book, Here Comes Everybody, he shows how the connection between different types of online social tools such as blogging, file sharing, etc. are used together for improved group interaction in a way that could never have been achieved before these technologies existed. Shirky's opening case about the stolen/lost cell phone is an extreme, yet incredibly vivid example of the power that these online social tools have when it comes to organizing group conversation and even action.
This first example that Shirky gives is quite interesting to me. Not only because I had not heard of it before, but also because of his presentation of how none of it would have been possible just years before it happened. Until very recently, only very wealthy people or institutions had the means to reach an audience of millions or even thousands.If something of value were lost by someone just ten or fifteen years ago, it would be highly unlikely that they would be able to get it back at all, let alone in a manner as dramatic as Shirky's example. However, with the convergence of different online social tools that are available to many people, not to mention at a much more affordable price, it was possible to recover the stolen phone.
One of my favorite parts of the book is when Shirky gives the example of his mother and father on their first date going to a drive-in movie. It is not the example itself that I enjoy so much, but rather the ideas that he develops out of this example. My favorite quote in the book (which is also a favorite of others when I read addditional material about the book) is when he says, "Communications tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring. The invention of a tool doesn't create change; it has to have been around long enough that most of society is using it. It's when a technology becomes normal, then ubiquitous, and finally so pervasive as to be invisible, that the really profound changes happen." At first I was not quite sure what to think about this quote and I had to read it two or three more times in context before it really made sense to me. I interpret this to mean that the advances in technological tools are not considered to bring about change, or rather an improvement, until it is used widely enough and by enough people for a significant improvement to actually take place. The invention of the Internet, although a significant development, did not actually improve the communication apabilities of the masses until it was later refined and made available to more people, which was a (relatively) long time after it was first developed. i also like how Shirky alludes to the fact that the Internet is really the first communication development that allows the audience to be in control of the content, giving them both the power of expression as well as the capability to reach a huge audience. No other communication technology has been able to do this before the Internet.
True that ten to fifteen years ago we would not have recieved our lost property back in the manner that Ivanna did. The bigger question here is... ten to fifteen years ago would our phone have been as valuable as today? Yes, the monetary value would remain the same, but is the phone now more valuable because of the data on it?
ReplyDeleteI do agree with your interpretation of that quote. These new technologies don't really get the attention until they are almost overused, where everyone knows about it. The amount of power just average people can have on changes within our technology seems to develop more when these new technologies are so popular that new and exciting ways are being made to do extraoridinary things like the cell phone example.
ReplyDeleteThe first story that was cited in the book seems to be popping up on a lot of blogs as being an interesting one, which I would have to agree. Personally I don't think I would have went through all of that in order to get my phone back, but that is just me!! It is interesting to see though however just how fast action was taken and the numerous amount of people who joined together in order to see this problem get resolved. One of the comments above brings up the point about our phone and how much value it serves. I would have to assume that this degree of action was prompted due to the fact that none of us seems to be able to separate from our phones, and we rely a great deal on having in with us wherever we go! Do you feel that this problem is only going to get worse with years to come? Or will something else come in and be developed to take that place?!?
ReplyDeleteGood point sjogrenvanheel, but I did not mean that it had to be a phone 10 to 15 years ago. It could just be anything of significant value or importance and the means of getting it back would not have been in place as it was in Shirky's example.
ReplyDeleteAnd to answer Katelyn's question, I do believe we will rely more and more on our cell phones in the years to come. You look at cell phones now and the phone capabilities are the least important of their features. We can surf the web, listen to music, navigate our way to places and do so many other things. I think that our reliance on our mobile technology will continue to rise.
One could look at this idea that the technology needs to be boring to create real change. That is a large enough group need to use the tool in normal activities for them to start creating innovative ways to use it. For more on this idea, see Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point" http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/index.html and Everett Roger's Diffusion of Innovations http://books.google.com/books?id=v1ii4QsB7jIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Diffusion+of+Innovations,+by+Everett+Rogers&source=bl&ots=DI_suIYt9P&sig=trHQ06c8OTwDeTD86OT4akhTHhc&hl=en&ei=E4aOTIK3IYainAe8042GCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CEIQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q&f=false .
ReplyDeleteSo what makes a tool transformative and another relatively unused, Ex. Tweeter v. Jaiku?