Here Comes Everybody
The Penguin Blog has a fascinating guest post by Clay Shirky, author of the soon-to-be-released Here Comes Everybody. From the post, it sounds like Shirky has some common sense ideas about “new” media that are lost on the capital “M” Media. For instance, Shirky acknowledges that a blog can be different things depending upon its purpose. It is a scalable communication platform.
Weblogs aren’t only like newspapers and they aren’t only like coffeeshops and they aren’t only like diaries — their meaning changes depending on how they are used, running the gamut from reaching the world to gossiping with your friends.
When BlueDuck is blogging drunk at LiveJournal, he’s blogging a communal context, and mostly for the amusement of his friends. As I’m writing this post for Penguin, I am self-consciously working on something for broad public consumption.
I think that a lot of this kind basic reasoning got lost last year when there was that book critics vs. book bloggers skirmish. Common sense might indicate that the purpose of this blog (or most any other book blog) is different from the [insert embattled newspaper name here]‘s book review pages.
If you live and blog in the UK, Penguin will send you the book for free. I like thinking about this stuff, so I’m definitely going to check this one out when its available. I expect that this book will be widely discussed when it is released.
Books, To Checkout | Tim | 
January 25, 2008 8:37 am
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