Q&A

What are social media?

See this wikipedia article which provides a good definition and links to other articles about specific types of social media – weblogs, wikis etc.  There are also links to the applications themselves.  The article defines social media as ‘…the use of electronic and Internet tools for the purpose of sharing and discussing information and experiences with other human beings.’

Is there anything missing from this definition?

Yes. I think it misses one of the most important implications of the social media which is that they enable us to learn together.  (Us being, potentially, ‘everybody’ in ‘Here Comes Everybody’.)  I don’t just mean learning in its academic sense, although that’s obviouslyy important – I mean learning from experience: the kind of learning which, I would argue, underpins everything we do.

Aren’t there lots of people – in developing countries for example – who don’t have web access?

Yes, but perhaps not as many as you’d think.  I work from time to time in Tanzania and web use has exploded there over recent years.  In the major cities, at least, there are internet cafes everywhere.  They are very cheap to use and lots of people use them in lots of different ways.  Here are just a few of the internet cafes in Dar es Salaam.

In the UK 61% of households had internet access by 2007, according to National Statistics Online.  Of course, virtually everyone can use the web at no charge at libraries and all schools have internet access.

Why did you find the book ‘inspirational’?

First because it’s about two topics that fascinate me: people and technology.  (See the ‘threads’ page at my business blog for more on this.) The idea that we have – during the course of my lifetime – developed a technology which enables people to think, learn and do things together on a very large scale seems to me very important and interesting.  Secondly, it’s very well written: Shirky tells his story very well indeed.  Thirdly the author introduces lots of ideas I knew about – such as the Small Worlds model from social psychology – in ways which make connections (literally, in the case of Small Worlds) I hadn’t seen before.

Lastly, and most importantly Shirky introduced me to many new ideas – such as his central argument that the web reduces ‘transaction costs’ to a point where we don’t need conventional hierarchical organisations any more if we want to do things on a large scale.

Which of the social media applications that Shirky mentions did you find most interesting?

www.meetup.com – the site is well worth a visit.  As Shiky points out, it’s entire purpose is to get people together in the ‘real world’.  The web as a tool for building ‘social capital‘.  I think this is both very interesting and very important for our – currently rather fragmented – society.

You make it sound as though the book is unremittingly positive – is that the case?

By no means: Shirky points out that the social media can be used very effecitively by criminals, terrorists and others whose aims aren’t entirely positive.  For example, he discusses the case of a discussion board which had to be closed down because it was taken over by people suffering from anorexia who were giving people tips on how to be anorexic: see this wikipedia article.

Is that all?

No, but I don’t have time to finish this right now.  I’ll come back to it later, but in the meantime please do feel free to ask questions yourself: I could get bored with talking to myself!  Use the comments facility or email me via andrew@mindworksonline.com

If there’s sufficient interest I would, as I mentioned on the review page, be very happy to organise a mini-book group to discuss Here Comes Everybody.

Andrew Cooper

August, 2008