Piers Jones

An anthropological introduction to YouTube

A really excellent and fun video on the ethnography of YouTube
from Michael Wesh who apparently is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University.

His original machine is using us video:

From: Johnnie Moore's blog

Book review: Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky

I have just finished reading 'Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations' by Clay Shirkyand I enjoyed it so much I thought that I would jot down a few thoughts here. I'm not quite sure how I came across the book, I hadn't heard of Clay Shirky before but he clearly has a deep understanding on how the internet has had an impact on society and how groups behave.

Every once in a while it's good to take a break from the day to day immersion in the here and now and reflect on some of the changes that have happened. I found this book to be a very valuable way of looking at those changes now that the use of collaborative tools are available to anyone that can get online or receive an email.

Here are my favourite thoughts and insights from the book:

• Some very succinct explanations of concepts like the Coasean floor, the tragedy of the commons and power law distribution which added a great deal to my understanding of why social tools have had an impact.
• A good debate around the changing nature of journalism and how this is now an activity as well as a job. Also a nice explanation of why 'User Generated Content' has value.
• Some good high level thinking about how the obstacles to collective action have been removed by the internet's new tools and more importantly how they might be used in the future to change the way we live.

If you like all this type of stuff I thoroughly recommend it as a good read.

If you dont have time for the book, here is the author's presentation to the TED conference from 2005 which covers the same themes in around 20 minutes.

The history of digital community

I really enjoyed this video (via Kristine Lowe) of Ethan Zuckerman presenting the history of digital community in less than 7 minutes. Well worth a watch.