First post

In this class we read Clay Shirky’s book, “Here Comes Everybody.” The overall theme of this book is that when given the right tools, the right mood, and the ability to do something with little effort, you can get people to do anything. After reading this book I have realized just how true what he was saying in the book is. I have been observing some very interesting trends around me concerning what Shirky calls “slacktivisim” and his ideas of new group forming techniques. So for my creative project I will run a blog that is my observations of slacktivism, group forming, and examples of “everyone coming together.” These will be ones I have observed personally or ones that have happened in the news around the world.



I’m going to cheat a little bit for this first one and use an example that Shirky uses in his book. I know what you are thinking but please hear me out in this one. I figured it would be best to use an example directly from Shirky so the themes and direction of this blog/project are clearly outlined for both the reader and myself. That seems pretty fair right?

Anyways the first example that Shirky gives in his book is the story of a lost cellphone and the quest and resulting media firestorm that followed. The story is that a girl left her Sidekick phone in a cab in New York. She checked the taxi company to see if anybody found it but deemed it lost forever. She purchased a new phone that was exactly the same as the previous one and noticed something strange. New pictures and contacts were being added to the phone. Her old phone was still working and was being used by a teenager. She asked politely for the phone back but the answer she got was no. That is the “cleaned up” answer. She asked for some help in retrieving her phone and a friend of hers made a website describing the story. This is when everything really took off.

The website immediately blew up and the story only continued to grow. People were offering their services to help, including someone who risked their job explaining how they could get this changed from a missed item to a stolen item by the police. The influx of people was usually helpful but a nastier side rose as well. Some users took photos the teen had taken with the phone and spread them around on the website writing mean comments on her looks and her friends and lifestyle. To wrap up this long story the NYPD were pressured to change the phone from a lost item to a stolen item and the teenage girl who had the phone was arrested for stealing it.

This is a great example of “slacktivisim.” All these people came to help find this phone but why? Was it because it was easy? Was it because people feel good by helping, even if it results in a teenager getting arrested? Was it a quest to see good triumph evil? Well it’s a little bit of all of that. The teenager was painted as the bad person in this situation and the woman who lost her phone was labeled as the good person. People were able to help with this problem by applying just their basic knowledge to the situation and really didn’t take too much effort from those helping. Shirky also talks about how new technology has made it easier for people to group together and get things accomplished.

The question now is, is this a good thing? On face value it is. People get together and do a little bit of work each but when that work is combined you create a solution, but will the cause always be a good one. Was the end result of a teenager getting arrested the original objective? And could this power of grouping and group work be used for worse things like hacking?

So that is the first post for this blog/project. I know this was nothing new people in the class haven’t heard but it will help make the other posts better…I hope. Stay tuned for more!!