Everybody's Everything

Even before I reached the tender age of accountability, my dad would drag me off to priesthood session during general conference. He says it helped me build character; I say it's because my mom and sister wanted a man-free house for a night every six months. Regardless of the real reason, I never learned much from any of the speakers at conference, except from Thomas S. Monson, storyteller extraordinaire . His humorous and engaging stories made his lessons memorable and understandable. Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody takes a similar approach, mixing ideas with real-life examples, to show that everybody can get together, everybody can contribute and everybody can change the world.

The story of Wikipedia in Chapter 5 best conveys this idea that an open project at the hands of the public can produce a high quality result. The doubts of onlookers are understandable, as they probably imagined a blank encyclopedia, sitting at a local library that anyone can read and write it. But Wikipedia's success proves that it's much more than that. The wiki programming simplify the logistics of added and editing content. It's accessibility allows any interested parties to contribute anytime and anywhere. And these communities, formed on similar interests and their contributions, protect their projects from vandals and trolls.

Here Comes Everybody shows how technology is breaking down communication and collaborative barriers in order to let the constructive and cooperative side of human nature shine.