Clay Shirky: Here Comes Everybody

Here Comes Everybody is a book about what happens when people are given the tools to do things together, without needing traditional organizational structures.

Clay Shirky divides his time between consulting, teaching, and writing on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. His consulting practice is focused on the rise of decentralized technologies such as peer-to-peer, web services, and wireless networks that provide alternatives to the wired client/server infrastructure that characterizes the Web. Current clients include Nokia, GBN, the Library of Congress, the Highlands Forum, the Markle Foundation, and the BBC. In addition to his consulting work, Mr. Shirky is an adjunct professor in NYU's graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), where he teaches courses on the interrelated effects of social and technological network topology -- how our networks shape culture and vice-versa.

More info
Read more about Here Comes Everybody on the book's Official website. On that site, there is also a wonderful article by Shirky called Gin, Television, and Social Surplus, which gives a good idea of Shirky's style as well the kind of ideas he is interested in. More of his writings, and further background info can be found at his website.
You can read his mind on Shirky's Twitter stream and have Infrequest postings of pictures a peek into his life on Flickr.

On ForaTV, you can watch Clay Shirky's talk at the Aspen Idea Festival

Order info
'Here Comes Everybody' can be ordered from Amazon US ($17,33), Amazon UK (GBP 8), BOL Netherlands (for an amazing Euro 28,99) or any other online bookshop. A Dutch translation has been announced, but is not available right now.

Praise from people we trust

"Clay Shirky may be the finest thinker we have on the Internet revolution, but Here Comes Everybody is more than just a technology book; it's an absorbing guide to the future of society itself. Anyone interested in the vitality and influence of groups of human beings -from knitting circles, to political movements, to multinational corporations-needs to read this book."
-Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad Is Good for You and Emergence

"How do trends emerge and opinions form? The answer used to be something vague about word of mouth, but now it's a highly measurable science, and nobody understands it better than Clay Shirky. In this delightfully readable book, practically every page has an insight that will change the way you think about the new era of social media. Highly recommended."
-Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine and author of The Long Tail

"In story after story, Clay masterfully makes the connections as to why business, society and our lives continue to be transformed by a world of net- enabled social tools. His pattern-matching skills are second to none."
-Ray Ozzie, Microsoft Chief Software Architect "

Clay has long been one of my favorite thinkers on all things Internet-- not only is he smart and articulate, but he's one of those people who is able to crystallize the half-formed ideas that I've been trying to piece together into glittering, brilliant insights that make me think, yes, of course, that's how it all works."
--Cory Doctorow, co-editor of Boing Boing and author of Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present.