Clay Shirky’s book about “the power of organizing without organizations” talks about social media without really talking about social media. Sure, he mentions some specific technologies – like Wikis – but the book serves a greater purpose in its discussion of the new organizational and power dynamics at play in the new media environment. In its entirety, the book highlights an increasing democratization of influence. While wealth and class may assure some notoriety, the new technology environment has ushered in a media meritocracy, flattening the power structure, giving any idea worthy of attention the ability to gain traction and become a part of the culture.
Nowhere has this phenomenon been more prevalent than in the technology industry. Shirky’s account of Wikipedia, paralleled with the higher level development of Linux, is one of the better known examples of this. This seemingly “unsupervised collaboration” has pushed Google to the top of the Silicon Valley power structure. Collaborative work environments that account for time to work on individual projects have proven to be the recipe that continues to stretch the limits of innovation. But Shirky and others often seem a bit too attached to the size of organizations, believing that once a group reaches a certain size, it can’t achieve that maximum level of “flatness”. As Google has surpassed its 16,000th employee, its creative fearlessness still seems stronger than ever.
Google Wave
Shirky throws political movements in the mix as well. We have a very recent example of this in the Iranian elections -
millions of 140-character articles by the Twitterati. However, as Shirky’s argument relies heavily on power dynamics, one must ask – how much power does this new media environment really have? As it turns out, not much. The Iranian elections were deemed valid by internal parties, the bloodshed of protesters has faded from our eyes. When Twitter effectively takes down a corrupt or illegitimate regime, the power dynamics will truly have changed.
Compared to others, Shirky tends toward the theoretical. Groundswell reads like “how to sell”, where HCE reads like “why things are selling”. Shirky mentions social media tools, but only in the context of anecdotal accounts. Even the chapter list sets the stage for thought leadership – by seeking to answer questions with big implications.
With all of these books focusing on the power of social media in bringing people together, I have come to wonder about the future of traditional organizations. What if we lived in a world where no rigid organizational structures existed, where the only way groups and unions of people would form was when an issue or cause united them in search of collective action? Imagine the lack of bureaucratic or administrative functions. I think immediately to non-profits, some of which spend 20% of their funds (donations or otherwise) on simply gathering MORE donations. This does not imply that non-profits have not been adept at harnessing the power of social media. But what if activists believed that their issues were valid and worthy enough for a group of people to unite in a passionate showing of strength behind it?
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