Why people recommend it
Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky is an examination of how social technology and digital media facilitate collective action, group formation, and mass coordination without traditional institutional hierarchies. On the podcast The Ezra Klein Show, in the episode titled How the $500 Billion Attention Industry Really Works, released on February 17, 2023, Tim Huang recommended the book as part of his closing reading suggestions. Huang shared that he had been actively reading the publication, characterizing it as an early exploration into the digital age that is thoroughly filled with optimism and excitement regarding the transformative promise of social technology and social media platforms. The book explores how digital tools dramatically lower the transaction costs required for people to organize, share information, and collaborate on a global scale. Huang pointed to this work to capture a specific historical moment when the internet and emerging online networks were viewed primarily as liberating forces capable of fostering unprecedented community engagement and decentralized social movements. Through this recommendation, listeners were invited to reflect on the foundational theories of digital connectivity and the early expectations surrounding the societal impacts of web-based communication platforms before the modern era of algorithmic curation and widespread platform scrutiny took hold.
Who recommended it
- Tim Huang Recommended
Tim Huang — 1 mention
“so the book I've been reading there is Clay shirkey's Here Comes everybody which is kind of this early book and kind of like filled with excitement about the promise of social technology and social media”