The inauguration of Barack Obama last week caught a lot of attention, naturally. It’s the sense of a new day in Washington, DC that Americans are all-too-aware of, and the world is taking notice with the hopes of a renewed, kindler, gentler US of A. Some are suggesting this presidency marks a seismic shift — no ordinary change of power, but a milestone marking a change in the way things are. Obama’s effective use of the Internet in his campaign has been likened to Kennedy’s effective use of television, with Arianna Huffington going as far as to say that without the Internet, Obama would not be president. In many ways, it’s the fruition of Joe Trippi’s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised Revised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything.
Barack Obama & the Social Pulpit
Emergent Terminology: It’s Not About Fracturing
Yesterday I wrote the introduction to this post, which ended up being about as long as the next bit that contained the important stuff I wanted to say, so I split it up. Feel free to start yesterday, then continue on below, which is about the whole mess of misunderstanding over networks that are not called Emergent.
Institutions vs. Collaboration
I read Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody not long ago, and I’ve mentioned it here a few times already. The subtitle of the book is, “The Power of Organizing Without Organizations,” and I must say that it provides some excellent food for thought on the future of the institution contrasted with the power of loosely-affiliated mass collaborative efforts. The word “organization” might be used, but in some contexts it creates an expectation of more formality than actually exists.
Here Comes Everybody: Thoughts on The Organization
Bill Kinnon is entirely to blame, but at least this time it’s not a bad thing. So far he has recommended Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations on his blog a couple of times, and the same to me via email a couple of times, and now on the telephone the other day, he did it again. What could I do? Armed with a $30 gift certificate I’d gotten for my birthday, I headed down to McNally Robinson and paid full price, in person at a bricks-and-mortar retail establishment (remember those?) to nab the last copy on the shelf.
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