"Multi-taskers often think they are like gym rats, bulking up their ability to juggle tasks, when in fact they are like alcoholics, degrading their abilities through over-consumption."
That's from Clay Shirky's latest piece on Medium about why he is banning his students from using laptops, tablets and mobiles in class (wearable tech, too, no doubt). Give it a read - but only if you aren't trying to concentrate on something else right now... My own experience is that if I want to get something done I have to close everything else down - even to the extent of putting earplugs in to avoid the distraction of the office I usually work in.
Students, even in the 21st Century, tell me the same when they have a deadline due. Connect to learn, connect to share, connect to develop, connect to grow. Disconnect to do?
What do you do when you want to get something done?
The Power of the Network - now in it's second, 100-page extended, edition is slowly but surely forming into just the kind of social object I hoped it would become: an interesting thing people can talk about together - their conversations creating new ideas, action and value.
The new version's chapters are as follows:
1. The Death of Death 2. Don't Just Witness the Network (adapting to survive) 3. How to Go Viral 4. Communities of Purpose 5. Advertising & Marketing in the 21st Century 6. We're All Publisher's Now - The user is the destination 7. It's Not How Famous You Are - It's How Relevant 8. Digital Identity and the Long Tail 9. Why Media is the New Business Ecology 10. We Are the Eighth Mass Media 11. Hail To the Chief Node 12. How We Are Made Great
Review copies are either in the hands of or on the way to the following. If you 'd like to join the list, just drop me an email with details of your blog and your postal address.
If you've read, reviewed it, shared it or would just like to be included in the following list please let me know via comments or email. Thanks
Seth talks about Tribes needing leaders, and all of us needing to belong. There is much of Mark Earls' Herd in this and much of Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody and even echoes of my own thinking about Communities of Purpose and the adhoc nature of group forming and who gets to be famous/a leader within each, as Seth would describe them, tribe.
But Seth's usp is his call to action. Tribes is a clarion call to the heretics - those of us who see the need for change. He demands that you take the initiative and make it happen. He calls the heretics, our leaders and says that the technological tools available to us today make it easier than ever to effect change, to become a leader, if YOU take the initiative. It's an energising message. Don't just pontificate; activate. Blogs, email and social networks give you the tools to not only to organise but to lead.
He demands YOU start your own movement. And he fears that people like you and I (we are the heretics, right?) are in short supply but therefore of the highest value. Seth's message is writ through with the sense that this change to a purpose and passion driven mode of production is good (and, for the record, he ain't wrong there). Hence the repeated message that we need YOU.
It's ok to follow. But if you want to and need to lead then you can and you should, because it's never been easier, he says.
Seth has often talked about how everyone is a marketer now (much like my own claims that we are all publishers and advertisers now). Tribes take this a step further. Not only are we now all marketers (publishers/advertisers) but everyone is a leader now. Tribes offer something to believe in (again, echoes of Mark Earls' purpose idea). We heretics have visions that function as emotive drivers of action - action intended to change the status quo.
How does that fit in the factory-style process pipe of traditional business? Not so well, I'm guessing...
The second big theme of Tribes is that the individual has more power than ever. Good people with ideas that matter are now able to step forward with the power to turn things upside down. And he keeps on insisting that they should.
You are not a 'sheepwalker'.
So what are you the heretic about? Where are you ready to lead?
Full 35min Clay Shirky interview now available to download
I've just added a new post to /Message - the full 35minute version of the Clay Shirky interview regular visitors to this site will have seen sliced up over the past week or so. On /Message you can get the whole thing in one hit AND download it all for playback on your pc/iPod etc.
In this seventh part Clay discusses his famous ideas about Gin, TV and cognitive surplus. And we consider what comes next: a world of participatory media. The question remains - is this just the next heat sink (ie something we commit more and more time to as a way of coping with the huge societal shifts that mass collaboration (the power of the network) will bring?
Clay believes we are entering a period of massive experimentation to discover what kind of amateur work and global collaboration will work. Expect to make plenty of mistakes along the way.
And from this the new organisational rules of a group-forming world will emerge.
Why Here Comes Everybody avoids the copyright debate
Part six of my interview with Clay Shirky has Clay defending himself against Felix Strader's criticism that Clay's book Here Comes Everybodyfails to address the copyright/DRM issue. Clay feels the battle is way less important than some might have it. It matters a lot to the broadcast media industry, but everyone else is quietly working around it with innovations like the creative commons.
Watch his answer below. See Clay speak live and in person here. Read his own words here.
Part five of my interview with Clay Shirky has the author of Here Comes Everybody answering the charge (contributed via this blog by Matt Edgar) that he may have chosen the wrong title for his book; since we were here, being social, all along. But Clay explains why he feels the sheer scale of collaboration available in a digitally connected world changes society and us.
"I'm not a technical determinist.... it's the novelty of scale, " he says.
Clay also tackles one of the toughest silos to overcome - language.
Another day, another part of my interview (the fourth) with Clay Shirky (author of Here Comes Everybody). And today's topic is education.
Clay rates the question (which came from Rebecca Caroe via twitter) as one of THE toughest and most important facing our generation. It is "How do we examine and score collaboration in education?"
Clay is an educator himself - at NYU. He believes there is a collision between the internal message in colleges and universities, which values and encourages collaboration, and the external message - which is that the education system does quality control of individual minds. (image via flickr by kokeshi)
He has no quick fix, but instead believes finding the right solution will be "the work of a generation".
Watch the video below. See him in person here. Buy his book, here.
I'm speaking at Widget Web Expo in London today. If you're there, come and say hi!
Today I'm pleased to share part III of my interview with Here Comes Everybody author Clay Shirky (recorded in London on September 30 at the offices of Incisive Media). It is part of a 35min interview.
In part three Clay discusses the different qualities of interaction required to humanise brands - and how creatives can welcome collaboration rather than seal it out. As Clay puts it: "Brands aren't people. They don't interact. People do." And he warns creatives who seek perfection in their campaigns: "Something cleaned up right to the edges has no room for me. Perfection says, you don't belong here." Clay's contention is messiness is human and acts as a welcome matt for interaction.
Watch the video below: See him in person here. Buy his book, here.
In part two Clay explains why he thinks email is the most effective tool for group-forming (and therefore for influence on social and political change) right now. He describes the impact its 'dull' ubiquity is having on the US Presidential elections. And we talk about the future of mass any-and-everything (though particularly broadcast TV) with reference to solidarity goods (value gained from shared experiences). Clay reasons that far from dumbing down, the fragmentation of the internet is demanding increasing quality from its hits. When media and channels were scarce you got a share in the value of solidarity goods simply for showing up. Now you only get a share by being truly excellent. Watch the video below. Buy his book here. See him speak here.
Clay Shirky on how algorithms caused the credit crunch
I had the great good fortune to meet and interview Clay Shirky (author of Here Comes Everybody) yesterday at Incisive Media in London. He was in town for the AOP conference among other keynotes - and meetings with Government Ministers, no less. So to get a one-to-one for any length of time was fantastic. We had a scheduled 20mins... but things got interesting so we stretched it...
The result is the video you see below. At least, that's part of the result. It's part one of seven. The interview lasts over 35mins in total and Clay answers not only my questions, but all those put through comments on this blog or via twitter over the last few days.
I'll be adding the next six parts over the next week or so - and for those who can take it all in one go - I'll add the full and unedited (and higher quality) version to google video before too long (youtube limits me to 10mins a pop, anyway).
In part one we talk about Clay's journey - what is in his background that makes him place the human element so high in his consideration of group forming network theory. (image by matlock via flickr)
And the new ways value are created in self-forming communities of purpose leads us to Clay's fascinating analysis of what the bankers did wrong and what they can learn (how social capital mitigates risk) from reconnecting with humans.
I'm speaking at Widget Web Expo in London next week (Oct 6-7) on: The User is the Destination Now - Widgets Role in the Eighth Mass Media. It's the first time I'll have rolled out the whole Eighth Mass Media thing to a live, in-your-face audience. So that'll be interesting. Ivan Pope has organised a great line-up of speakers, so I hope you'll join me there. If it's anywhere near as good as Widget Web Expo New York it'll be a cracker.
That's next week. Today I'm in London to meet and interview Clay Shirky (with my copy of Here Comes Everybody in hand for him to sign!)
I've got the opportunity to interview Clay Shirky on Tuesday this week thanks to the lovely people at Incisive Media. I'm a big fan of Clay's work particularly his recent book Here Comes Everybody. (currently available with £8 off at Amazon) I'll be video recording the interview to share later - using one of the just-arriving Flip Video Mino's. Just been sent one to test by Alex Myers - who responded to my bleating tweets for something simple to shoot and share with ( I am a-cursed with a 3G unjailbroken iPhone - no video recording!). You'll see the results on this blog later this week. And you can help shape the results right now: simply post a question you'd like to put to Clay in the comments below and I'll do my best to include as many as possible in the interview.
Wow. Best £8 you'll spend this year, I reckon. Clay Shirky's book is currently cut from £20 to £8 on Amazon. Thought you should know. Recommendation or advert? It's up to you.
The eighth mass media is where: we are the connections and the way the connections are made; beyond silos. It needs tools but it isn't made by them.
It's the direction we're headed in. The sixth and seventh medias (internet and mobile) are helping us on our way.
How we choose to connect, in which silo or with which tools, is less important than that we do connect - and, crucially, as widely and instantly as possible. Blogs are quite good for this. They are considerably less silo'd than your average (what we traditionally think of) social network. Don't write them off just yet.
More importantly Hugh refers us to one of Clay Shirky's more oft-repeated lines (my emphasis):
"So forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this -- the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast."
We can all share content. Content is the conversation starter, conversation is where ideas turn into action, action is where value is created.
Now we can all share in sharing this. We can all share ourselves.
That is what changes everything.
In some ways the eighth mass media is also the first (as J_Mac pointed out in a comment on the original post).
Alan Moore and Tomi Ahonen's work on Mobile as the 7th mass media lists them thus: 1. Print 2. Recordings 3. Radio 4. Cinema 5. TV 6. Internet 7. Mobile
The eighth is where we are moving towards: We are the eighth mass media. But we were of course always the first, too.
The difference between the pre-mass information age and the post mass broadcast age is speed of transmission and scale of spread both enabled by the ubiquity of connectivity.
We need the sixth and seventh mass medias to enable the eighth.
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