This week on Spark, a feature interview with Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. Clay and Nora talk about the pros and cons of social media, new online business models online, and how big change comes from human motivation, not shiny new technologies.
Note: A shorter version of this interview aired on Spark 38.
You can listen to the show below, or download the MP3.
Play audio:
This episode features Creative Commons music and sound effects:
- “1987″ by Windom Earle
- “talkin about practice instrumental” by airtone
[Original image by Joi]
What a brilliant interview! Clay Shirky is extremely insightful and has sounded an intelligent and balanced warning about our future. We need to fasten our seatbelts and get ready for the future. It is going to be disruptive! Please see my post on viewing the fuutre through a historical lense. Although I am not as articulate, it dovetails with some of Clay’s comments: http://whetstoneinc.ca/blog/?p=13
Just got in from driving and caught part of this fascinating interview. I’ve been an IT professional since 1972, a devoted amateur photog since 1964 and haven’t ‘done TV’ for ~15 years, so it hit close to home on several fronts. I’ll be sure to listen to the whole thing in the next few days… and maybe even listen to ‘Spark’ more, as this was a first for me. Thanks!
Beware of any philosophy that has a lynchpin. I was grumbling about Shirky’s facile interpretations of the world -and struggling to organize my counterarguments- when he said “If I’m wrong about this, I’m wrong about everything.” As so he is.
Let’s face it. When Shirky describes the rise of A-listers, such as himself, he fails to point out that charlatanism has a good deal to do with this. He uses fuzzy economic theory and suspect communications theory to build a worldview that he really hasn’t a clue about.
Shirky is a carpetbagger. He has risen to great heights in the ersatz academic world of New Media. He joins the ranks of many ohters such a Wu, Lessig and others, who, using a pastiche of garbled learning from a cross-section of disciplines, claim to have found the answer to life, the universe, and everything.
Alas, I don’t think it’s true. Lynchpin thinking inevitably turns out to be wrong. And, as will be the case of Shirky, the next generation will look back and wonder how anyone took him seriously, so obvious will be the smoke & mirrors he employs.
I think one would do better to reexamine Innis rather than McLuhan. “The medium is the massage parlour.”
Mr. English, the fact that you have the ability to contribute to the conversation of Young and Shirky through this forum negates your comment of "As so he is."
Posting on the comment of a blog is an amateur contribution to a community, and whether you are in favour of Shirly's thesis or not, you are supporting the point that it makes. Amateur contribution is going to drastically change the social interactions of the globe. Major media markets are changing and the sharing of information is taking on a new face.
Resorting to calling someone " a carpetbagger" shows a personal inability to remain intellectual and explore an issue for its validity rather than its source.
"Lynchpin" thinking does not inevitably turn out to be wrong, close minded name calling inevitably turns out to be wrong.
The fundamentals of thought lay the foundations for higher levels of thinking and when a fundamental is incorrect than all further findings from it will be fallible as well, and the community will reinvestigate to find a replacement. 1 + 1 = 2 is "lynchpin" thinking, yet you haven't seen the community rally to change it to 1 + 3 = 2. Shirky's "lynchpin" statement was one made to illustrate the validity of his findings rather than hinge them upon the opinion of an internet comment.
Interesting comment, but I don’t know what value it adds. It subtracts value in that it critiques a person without any substantive critique of the ideas. I am curious what people think he got wrong, as I sure don’t see it.
I’ll offer my own personal narrative. My formal training is in computing (hardware design as a youth, more software in University, and now make much of my money as a system administrator).
On the side I have a passion for public policy. My commercial experience is in Free/Libre and Open Source Software systems, and I’ll have to admit to simply not understanding the “logic” behind proprietary software. I strongly believe FLOSS is an example of a new model of economic production that is different than what we saw in the past. This is explained well by Yochai Benkler http://benkler.org/ in his book “The Wealth of Networks”.
What excites me about this model the most is that it is multi-sectoral. It doesn’t pretend that any single sector has all the answers, or all the right participants for creativity. Unlike organizing labour into markets and firms which largely disallow multi-sectoral collaboration, peer production actively encourages it.
When I started, I was part of the voluntary sector. It was based on my volunteer work that my business formed – clients have nearly always been based on recommendations from people who know me from my volunteer work. I now have government, NGO, and regular for-profit customers, and continue to participate in the same peer production communities regardless of the type of participant I happen to be any given moment.
I noticed the government wanting to push forward policy that would make illegal or seriously disadvantage this production model, so became involved politically.
If I am remembered in the future at all it will be for my voluntary policy work, not any of the technical work I’m doing that I’m getting paid for. In some ways it isn’t fair to call this a “surplus” given once I had my foot in the door I have dedicated more and more of what would have been paid/structured time to this volunteer policy work.
Some of the discussion of cognitive surplus reminds me of some of the “Content is King” discussions in the so-called Copyright debate. Legacy content producers and their devotee politicians truly believe that commercially produced content is the most important roll of communications media. This comes up in the conversations about copyright (DRM, broadcast flags, levies) or even CanCon (See Jesse’s discussions over at Search Engine http://www.cbc.ca/searchengine/ for more on this).
The reality is that “content”, in this meaning, is not “King” now — if it ever was. Communications and community are “King”, and if in a policy discussion there is a conflict between legacy content production/distribution and communications/community, then communications/community must win out.
I’ve thought about this many times. If I was ever told that I had to choose between my high-speed Internet connections (or even Net Neutrality as an end-to-end network policy, or unlocked/untethered communications) and television, my television would be out the door in a second. The same can be said of any commercially produced content: if forced to choose, then I’ll very easily opt out of that content.
While far less drastic, people are already making that type of choice. There is only so much time in the day, and people do have to make choices of how to waste/spend/invest that time. People are watching less television today than they did in the past. If you couple that with the insights from Don Tapscott (see November 17 full interview from the archives) we know that younger people aren’t watching television the same way their parents did even when they do watch television. I have observed what Don spoke of personally, and like Clay find that they articulate well things I have already observed/felt.
Here I am, writing something based on the cognitive surplus I had when listening to this show with my portable MP3 player.
But, Russell, that’s exactly why the economic theories of Shirky, Benkler, Lessig and Wu are a crock. They’re thinly disguised utopian socialism. Even Benkler is blind to the fact that the “professionals” and “suckers” in which he divides those market-based web enterprises actually describes all web networks. Aren’t those programmers designing networks essentially buying up ‘Dead Souls’ that they then hope to sell in the real marketplace?
Although I have great sympathy for Kropotkin’s theory of Mutual Aid and think that no society can survive if every interaction has a monetary value, I have little respect for people who pretend that large sums of money aren’t changing hands in the new media. Shirky’s hands are very dirty from counting money.
And I have great respect for copyright. Cory Doctorow may want to give away his novels for free, but he writes as a hobbyist and makes his money flogging his Wobblie idealism. (Of course, I suspect his daughter may sue him in 18 years for mental cruelty for giving her the name Poesy Emmeline Fibonacci Nautilus. Maybe he thought she was his virtual daughter.)
The truth is that the Web is still supported by a market-based economy. As the real economy collapses, so too will the Web’s virtual economy. Will Google and Wikipedia be coming to government soon asking for a bailout? Will government simply take the means of communications over? We’ll soon see.
Besides, I prefer to know that people like Nora Young are paid a decent wage and aren’t obliged work late shifts at Starbucks between doing podcasts from their home offices.
I’m trying to understand David’s arguments. I’ve read Shirky, Benkler and Lessig, and I’ve even made my own comments on these writers, as well as C. Doctorow, and posted these on the web in order to organise my thoughts and get feedback from others whom I would not be able to meet in my small town. I make my living in the “market economy” but it is very much enabled by the “virtual economy”. I’ve also learned from my work with open source business models that the web has shifted where money is made in the value chain. Money is still changing hands, but at a different point, and some business models are rendered obsolete. Shirky understands this.
Here are my thoughts on David’s arguments:
1. Lynchpin thinking? Please define.
2. Innis vs McLuhan? I have to agree with David that Innis doesn’t get the recognition he deserves, but is that a reason to repudiate McLuhan?
3. Benkler, Lessig, Wu et al are “erzatz academics” in “new media” – please enlighten me.
4. I never read in Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks any categorisation of “professionals” and “suckers” – citation needed.
5. Cory gave his daughter a weird name but what does this have to do with Shirky’s interview?
6. “the Web is still supported by a market-based economy” – the web is not a separate economy or a separate market, it is an enabler of communications, between people, within and without organisations, for commercial and non-commercial communications. The Web & the Market Economy are proverbial apples and oranges.
7. Google & Wikipedia asking for a bailout – Google is a publicly traded company with revenues that exceed costs, and enough cash on hand to weather more disruption than the automotive sector can. Wikipedia is a non-profit foundation that receives its funding from corporations and private donors, but keeps its operating costs very low so it will probably last a while longer yet.
8. The Internet is a network of networks and would be difficult for the government to take it over, though many governments and corporations are trying to control information on the Net. The means of communications include the billions of personal computers distributed in homes around the world and these nodes are increasing.
9. I too am glad that Nora is paid for her work, but I am sure that some of her previous unpaid work helped her to get known and that the Net played some role in that (Nora can correct me on this point).
Am I missing something?
David, haven’t we had enough scare mongering of late?? Shirky is incredibly bright, insightful and charming, and he articulates what many researchers of undisputable academic and professional pedigrees have written about for decades. (Benkler and MacLuhan are among them, as are the computer scientists of the 1960s and 1970s who are now recognized as the fathers of the Internet.) Shirky himself has a solid technical background, a visionary mind and the courage to speak out. He makes no apologies in stating that the 21st century will not fit neatly into the 20th century capitalist, communist, or any other cookie cutter economic model. Peer-production, the hybrid economy, increased accountability, redifined privacy, and we hope, security that does not compromise anonymity, will be the way of the future. And don’t worry, David, you’ll still be able to make a buck.
Thank you, Nora and colleagues, for a fantastic show!
Anyone who blithely says and any reporter who quickly agrees with: "Before consumer society there was no cognitive surplus because there was no free time" has probably never spent time outside of their consumer society or in a rural context. There is LOTS of free time. Many repetitive tasks, lots of waiting – for the rain to stop, for the calf to be born, for spring. Ample opportunity to think and create. Maybe not free as in "free to leave and go away", but certainly free as in "free to let your mind wander and consider other things". Do not make the mistake of thinking that only consumers/urban dwellers are smart/educated/thinkers.
Step outside your little consumer box and see the world.
I have to grant EMJ a point there. Cognitive surplus is not a 20th century phenomenon. Maybe fewer people had the time to do it, but even those who did did not had time. How did the Protestant Reformation happen? Peasants definitely had thoughts about that.
However, I just want to comment on Shirky's analogy that the printing press may have ended the careers of scribes but opened the careers of novelists and journal publishers. I forget who said it but I remember a comment once somewhere that said one of the negative results of the age of hi-tech is that the technology is changing so fast it has no time to actually establish a culture and a place for everyone within it.
The printing press was around long enough to create quite a vibrant print culture. Technology changes so quickly that people have to keep updating their technologies, going through learning curves, purchasing new technology, catching up with what is happening currently on the latest technology that there is no time to establish a culture. Today we have the blog, will it be around next year or will something new emerge? And 10 years from now?
It is almost impossible now to cultivate a culture. We are in a fast lane where the speed is increasing rapidly and its all we can do to keep up. Some people are already ahead of a game that will only become dominant in the next couple of years and don't yet know it, some people are setting off in a direction that may be totally right now but will be obsolete in a couple of years. How does one plan for a career in this business? Do you think if blogs go belly up to something totally new anyone will want to go back and read the old blogs the way they read old books published in 1850?
It is planned obsolescence at an ever increasing rate and the only ones with a sure bet of making money on it will be the producers of the new technology. We do not live in an age that is about the products of technology, it is about technology. Drop your motorola and get a blackberry, drop your blackberry and get an ipod. Forget the mouse and start poking the screen with your fingers. I am sure, very soon, we will not even be writing here anymore, we will be speaking directly onto, or performing onto.