From the evolution of the printing press, the phone, the film, and now the Web, Clay Shirky points out the we are evolving in much the way the book Groundswell says. We are going form one way communication, to two way communications to what he calls “many to many communication.”
Many to many communication is just what it sounds like. Groups and masses of people are now sharing information with other masses of people. The users of the web are now the producers of the web content. The Web becomes the administrator of the different groups. It can also keep the research organized by having the different information sources readily available concurrently.
Two examples of this evolution that Shirky cited were great moments in history. One was China having an earthquake. China is a heavily censored country which relies on the government to show and censor what its people see. The last earthquake took them many months to acknowledge. This past earthquake was different. Many people posted to social media the conditions of the people during the disaster as well as the government’s efforts to cover up structural weaknesses which came out during the damage assessment.
China could not censor the past earthquake, Shirky says, as the social media was global, social, ubiquitous, and abundant. In short, like in the Groundswell accounts, there are just too many people in the web posting instant content in real time for any central government to control. China had to let some of the news be sent out before it tried to shut down the social media sites. By the time it did both the local people and the world knew of the conditions the Chinese people faced. Local pressure was out on officials to find out who allowed such shoddy infrastructure and the world got international aid to the people. This would not have happened in the old censored government controlled media model.
The other example is a shining one of web transparency. The Obama website voted in a free trade agreement called FICA different then the party was calling for. People began to post on the site that Obama should look at his vote more carefully. As more and more people voted about this vote, Obama felt the need to answer the groundswell of postings with his position and the facts of why he voted the way he did. He also left all of the positive and negative postings about the FISA trade agreement on his site. This is true web democracy in action, and may be the Web’s finest political hour. Keeping the facts in the hands and fingers of the people in real time, the Web has evolved to even be a sort of political watchdog.
Shirky attributes the Web evolutionary persons to be a few attributes in general. They are local in geography, post quickly, are amateurs by way that they can post freely, and are abundant in number. It is in these terms that the group versus group movement is thriving. Ty Ray
Social Media In Action 
FYI Here is the link to the original web video tyRay
I thought the China example was a great one. I did not fully understand how much the Government still tried to oppress the citizens of the country to this day. Shirky talks about how before it was only official media that was reporting the new but the use of Twitter was able to change that all. You stated, ” Local pressure was out on officials to find out who allowed such shoddy infrastructure and the world got international aid to the people. This would not have happened in the old censored government controlled media model.” This is so interesting that within hours there were donation sites and information was being recorded and reported instantly. This makes me think about 9/11 events. What if Twitter was widely used like it is now, would our responses been different? Great review, thank you 🙂
It’s interesting, to think about the users being the producers of content. Already, we’ve seen a TV show based on a Twitter feed (—- My Dad Says) and people become far larger stars than they deserve thanks to social media (see: Every. Single. Reality personality).
We’re so busy worry about about those types that we totally miss all of the important things social media accomplishes. For example: during the Occupy Walk Street protest, social media helped to identify the police officer that maced a group of people simply standing by doing nothing.
Hi Ray,
I really like how Shirky put things into perspective by going through the evolution of social media down through the years. When you think about it we really have come a long way in how we communicate with each other. Just think, historically, you picked up the telephone and you spoke to one person at a time. This has been slightly modified with things like conference calling where you can speak to multiple persons at one time, in fact, you can have an entire meeting via telephone. However, what I find interesting is that someone would have been annoyed, in fact, outraged to learn of someone tapping into or listening unauthorized into a telephone conversation. But think, with social media, you don’ have that level of privacy, once you put something out there, it’s there for the world to see. You really have limited control over who reads your messages and interestingly, some don’t seem to mind that. Ever wonder, wha’ts next?
Bronte