Creative Surplus Creativity and Generosity In A Connected Age by Clay Shirky

Creative Surplus Creativity and Generosity In A Connected Age by Clay Shirky

The central idea of this book is that because of social media people are able to pool resources in their free time to create unique digital projects.  These projects can range from free encyclopedias like Wikipedia to lolcats which is a collection of funny pictures of cats.  Social media in this book expands beyond computers to include smartphones and cell phones.




Clay Shirky is arguing people are moving away from passive forms of entertainment like television to more interactive forms of entertainment like the internet.  He compares television to gin which is a bit far fetched but entertaining.  This change represents a shift in values which should create a more interactive future.



I found the book to be very positive and a bit evangelistic about the benefits of social media.  He dismisses the disruption caused by deprofessionalization when amateurs volunteer to do many jobs that were professional in nature.  Clay Shirky touches only briefly on the concept of digital sharecropping where writers and other creative professionals work for free or very little money on blogs and other digital projects.



The description of the benefits of social media is the best part of this book.  We learn how cell phone use makes government more transparent, how people created open source software, and how computers are making us more connected.  He points out that services like http://www.meetup.com/ extend social networks into the real world and allow people who had only met on computers to meet in person.



This book had a conversational tone that spoke directly to the reader.  It tried to connect with peoples every day experience of using the internet.  I found it to be easy to read.  It was also well researched with extensive notes and an index.



Clay Shirky also wrote Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.  He is considered an internet guru and is a professor at New York University.

Daily Thoughts 7/18/2010

Scottish Poetry Library, Crichton's Close, Canongate, w:Edinburgh Designed by Malcolm Fraser Architects, shortlisted for Channel 4's Building of the Year 2000, Picture taken by Brian D. Osborne, Creative Commons Share Alike Attribution 2.0, Found on Wikimedia.

Daily Thoughts 7/18/2010

I checked Google Webmaster Tools this morning and found two sites that were interesting with links to mine. The first is More Vikings which uses this title because the author wishes Jane Austen had more vikings. It is a blog about speculative fiction. I like their lists of different genres including Noire, Steampunk, Weird Westerns, and Cyberpunk. http://www.morevikings.com/

Another blog which had me in their blogroll is http://shakespearewroteformoney.wordpress.com/ It reviews many literary titles.

I changed the signature on my personal email to include a link to this blog and added a link to the Mount Vernon Public Library Foundation http://www.mvplfoundation.org/ . In addition I went into my work email and changed it to include a link to the Mount Vernon Public Library Foundation with the words please donate.

There is something called Signature Marketing. This means if you work in a company, all of the signatures should contain the persons name, title, address, phone and extension, a link to the company, and a link to the products for sale. This way if someone sends out a message, they will always be selling the company.

First-ever National Study: Millions of People Rely on Library Computers for Employment, Health, and Education 77 million people used library computers and Internet access in past year
http://www.imls.gov/news/2010/032510.shtm

Jeff Vandermeer on a Persons Private Booklife Versus Public Booklife

I read some more of Booklife on the train to work today. While I was reading Publishers Weekly, I came across a starred review for The Third Bear a collection of fantasy short stories by Jeff Vandermeer. I also put Clay Shirky's new book, Cognitive Surplus Creativity and Generosity In A Connected Age on hold. I don't usually work Sundays. This is the first time.

On the way home, I finished reading Booklife on the train. The book is more about the process of being a writer than about how to be a writer. It explains what is being done, not how to do it. I will probably write a review later this week.

Daily Thoughts 4/21/2009

Original caption states: "Located on the Ground Floor Corridor, the White House Library features a collection of selected works to represent of a full spectrum of American thought and tradition for the use of the President, his family, and his staff."

Daily Thoughts 4/21/2009

Today was another incredibly busy day. I reviewed a new librarians orders with them before they were sent in. There were a few orders for books related to libraries. I am looking forward to getting Pop Goes the Library: Using Pop Culture to Connect with Your Whole Community by Sophie Brookover and Elizabeth Burns.

I also went over a new arrangement for our technical service area with one of my colleagues, and spent some time sorting through books which came in separating reference books and books that needed to be processed immediately.

I am planning on ordering many of the plays and musicals which are currently running on Broadway as well as several books which people have requested.

On the way home, I finished reading Here Comes Everybody, The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky. There are a lot of interesting ideas throughout this book. For example, on Sourceforge, a site for free open source software, only 5% of the open source software accounts for most of the traffic. Open source allows for lots of experimentation and failure, people are free to create the software and fail at it with little consequence. The software that succeeds becomes very successful because people very quickly add to the successes.

Web Bits

I made it into The Best of the Web blog directory. This is not so easy to do. It is a human edited directory of web sites that is very particular about who they will add. http://blogs.botw.org/Arts/Literature/

Daily Thoughts 4/19/2009

Ancient greek man with wax tablet Painting by ancient greek painter Douris (about 500 BC) . The image almost looks like a laptop computer.

Daily Thoughts 4/19/2009

I am reading the CREW Manual from Texas State University. They have an interesting acronym for weeding or as some people call it deselection.

M = Misleading (and/or factually inaccurate)

U = Ugly (worn and beyond mending or rebinding)

S = Superseded (by a truly new edition or by a much better book on
the subject)

T = Trivial (of no discernible literary or scientific merit; usually of
ephemeral interest at some time in the past)

I = Irrelevant to the needs and interests of your community

E = The material or information may be obtained expeditiously
Elsewhere through interlibrary loan, reciprocal borrowing, or in
electronic format.

Mustie

There were also a few interesting selection lists in the online manual as well.

Video Round Table’s Notable Videos list at
http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/rts/vrt/initiatives/notablevideos/index.cfm

“Top Fifty
Gaming Core Collection Titles” from Young Adult Library Services online at
http://wikis.ala.org/yalsa/index.php/Gaming_Lists_&_Activities#

I started reading Here Comes Everybody The Power of Organizing Without Organizing by Clay Shirky. The book started out rather slow, but has become interesting in the second chapter. It is about how the new communication tools make it possible to very quickly organize around a common interest for very little cost with minimal needs for hierarchical management.

This is a fragment of a sentence from P.107 of Here Comes Everybody, "The more an institution relies on information as its core product, the greater and more complete the change will be."

The book reminds of the earlier book on Google and Wikipedia which I have read. There seems to be a common thread running through these organizations. They are platforms for doing a specific task, Google started as a search engine, and Wikipedia started as a free encyclopedia. They both are becoming much more by harnessing a new set of social and organizational philosophies.

There seems to be an emerging pattern in the new social platforms; The are built initially by a very small group of people, they can scale very quickly, they require some kind of voluntary participation, there is usually a common interest attached to each platform (books, photography, fashion, etc.), all rely on continuous incremental improvement, all have easy to follow measurements, there is a strong customer service ethic, the technology is easy to use, they rely on the virtual world (not the physical world of atoms), and they can easily move into new ventures. You can say this of Twitter, Facebook, Google, Flickr, and many other successful social network platforms.

All I can say for libraries is that not far down the road, we have to be prepared to change rapidly. Google has previously indicated with books if it is in a library, it is worth scanning. The public domain is going to become a giant free platform available through dozens of different channels, flickr, Wikipedia, Google, Project Gutenberg and other locations. This platform is going to expand rapidly as people add to it forming novel ways of handling information. Wikipedia is already morphing into Wikibooks, Wikimedia, and other things. The technology comes first, then a period of disruption, and finally a new reality. I am not sure what it will be, but it will be a lot different than todays libraries, publishing and bookstores.