Just before Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizing was released, the UK publisher (Penguin) offered free advance copies to bloggers of all stripes.  I checked with Penguin US to see if they had a similar deal going - I’m assuming that their lack of a reply meant “no such luck”.  It is too bad, this book should be mandatory reading for bloggers everywhere.

Shirky’s book is an examination of the revolution (his word) that we are currently experiencing in our ability to communicate with one another in a way that is unprecedented in human history.   Shirky says:

The current change, in one sentence is this: most of the barriers to group action have collapsed, and without those barriers, we are free to explore new ways of gathering together and getting things done.

If you’ve been around an internet lately you know this, of course.  What Shirky’s book does is explain the scope of the change, the significance of the change, and where the change may be leading us. 

The book also provides a needed perspective.  For example, Shirky compares the magnitude of our current changes in communication to the world before and after the printing press. Shirky says that the Web 2.0 revolution has exploded that old saw about freedom of the press being limited to those who own a press.  Unfortunately for those who make their living with a press, we all own a press now.

The most intriguing part of the book is Shirky’s examination of why so many people have been willing to freely contribute to participatory projects online (i.e., blogs, WikiPedia, social networking sites, etc.).  The surprising answer is a little squishy:  love -

We are used to a world where little things happen for love and big things happen for money. Now, though, we can do big things for love.

If you blog or participate in an online community with any frequency, surely you’ve had a friend (or twelve) that has questioned your enthusiasm and has asked the vaguely insulting question,  “That’s cool and all, but where do you get the time?”  Please direct those friends to this excellent essay by Shirky about the less-squishy concept of our collective “cognitive surplus”.

Cognitive surplus is the time that we have available inside our own heads when we are not working, taking care of the kids, etc.  Shirky argues that the power of this surplus has been masked for the past sixty years or so with television.  I won’t say that this newly tapped potential is always put to good use – I have it on good authority that most blog posts and Facebook updates happen in the quiet hours of the night — but it is certainly more active than absorbing television.  Turning the question around on your busier than thou questioners: The question is not where do you get the time, but what are they doing to take advantage of their cognitive surplus.

If your mind is blown on a daily basis by the tools that are suddenly available to one and all, you have to read Shirky’s book.