“Collaborative production, where people have to coordinate with one another to get anything done, is consistently harder than simple sharing, but the results can be more profound”(109). In Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody” chapter five, Shirky discusses the founding of Wikipedia and uses it as a prime example of collaborative productive. One of the topics that Shirky mentions that I found very interesting was the predictable imbalance participation with social network. This is something that caught my attention because I didn’t to realize the fact that individuals usually a tiny proportion of contributors do the greatest amount of the work. However, there are reasons for this behavior.
One of the reasons may be that “many more people are willing to make a bad article better than are willing to start a good article from scratch”(122). According to Shirky’s interesting observation with the “asphalt” Wiki page example, no one needs to know everything about asphalt or about the Wiki page being created for it to be superior; which is the reason why Wikipedia is so successful. But this success was accomplished through the use of “free to say and do so many things with so many other people” (123). Wikipedia provides a sort of freedom that attracts individuals to participate in such a tool. Shirky elaborates on some of the topics mentioned in class on how Wikipedia is a network in which a lot of editing occurs, which can lead to false information. Not all improvement may pertain to enhancing the article. However, to Wikipedia’s benefit this is not a problem because “bad changes can be rooted out faster, but also partly because human knowledge is provisional”(119). This shows how a pool of resources or join forces can get things done when they work together. Furthermore, this bring us to the topic Shirky introduces called “Predictable Imbalance Participation”. An example given by Shirky when discussing predicatable imbalance was the asphalt article and the 7 july 2005 London bombings, and how there Wikipedia pages received many contributors. This imbalance between the individuals contribute and the few users who don’t contribute can affect a Wikipedia in a great way because “fewer than two percent of the Wikipedia users ever contribute, yet that is enough to create profound value for millions of users”(125). This imbalance can be very surprising due to the fact that everyone has the equal opportunity to contribute, yet there are a few that choose not to.
I believe that one of Shirky’s motives in this chapter was to discuss the key fact that as long as these social tools hand freedom, there may be a large amount of the average users, that can lead to a continue in growth like the social tool Wikipedia. However, this may occur because today individuals are quick to participate in social networks that provide non-mangerial obligation.
In chapter six, Shirky’s main focus is how the use of sharing information and effective teaming can make collective action possible. One of the observations she discusses to illustrate a better a picture of how collective action can make a change is through the cases of the two Catholic priest John Geoghan and James R. Porter. Collective action is depicted in Shirky’s example through the join force of VOTF (Voice of the Faithful). Shirky also makes it clear that through all of the daily tools ( cellphones, emails, blogs, and all of the other social networks), “Revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new technologies – it happens when society adopts new behaviors”(160). Furthermore, I agree with Shirky because it is true that technology has allowed us to intertwined or connect with one another, and new opportunities. But these advantages that technology brings is dependent on our desire to use it. If we don’t support it then society “revolution” (uprising) does not occur. The VOTF collective action is similar to chapter one’s case with the lost cell phone and Evan’s collective action using a website to get the word out into the public.