Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organisation Without Organisations

A handful of kite hobbyists scattered around the world find each other online and collaborate on the most radical improvement in kite design in decades. A few people find that a world-class online encyclopedia created entirely by volunteers and open for editing by anyone, a wild, is not an impractical idea. A dissatisfied airline passenger comments on a blog and it leads to a petition for a Passenger's Bill of Rights. Jihadi groups trade instruction entirely online ...

Everywhere you look, groups of people are coming together to share with one another, work together, or take some kind of public action. For the first time in history, we have tools that truly allow for this. In the same way the printing press amplified the individual mind and the telephone amplified two-way conversation, now a host of new tools, from instant messages and mobile phones to weblogs and wikis, amplify group communication. And because we are natively good at working in groups, this amplification of group effort will change more than business models- it will change society.

What does it mean that someone with a laptop can spark a movement that changes the fortunes of a billion-dollar-industry or help topple a government? This profound and larger social impact is only now being explored. In Here Comes EverybodyClay Shirky, one of the new culture's wisest observers, give us his lucid and penetrating analysis of what the impact of this social revolution will be - for better or worse - on what we do and who we are.