Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody (2008) - Term Paper Example

As an example, many people are blogging about thousands of topics. Some of these blogs are personal and only go out to a few people (usually family and friends) while others are intended for a larger, more global audience. These blogs may have errors in them but they are being shared without filtering. Socially, the “publish than filter” approach is able to bring people together on a larger scale than previously available. People can learn about each other via several social networking sites and they can meet large groups of people via these sites.

People are able to have conversations with perfect strangers about their ideas. Economically, many people have learned to master social business networking by sharing content on several social networking sites that include Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube. Each site has a different way of giving content but people are able to gain an understanding of the person behind the business as well as the business. Mass amateurism, according to Shirkey, refers to the idea that anyone can publish anything so “everyone is a media outlet”.

This means that people do not have to have fancy degrees in journalism or be professional writers to be published on the Web. People are able to provide different viewpoints on a variety of topics and it does not matter who they are as a writer. Also, the individuals are able to publish more often and more regularly. One example that Shirky keeps exploring is the Blog. The blogs are written on many different topics and people can present their political views, share photos, or create videos and publish them all over the Internet with most of the tools to do these things provided for free.

Another example that Shirky gives is the use of instant messaging and other chat programs that allow the individual to be in touch with a variety of people in real time. These types of media allow an individual to publish more than once, on a regular basis, and more is said than would be possible in print newspapers and magazines because of the standards of those newspapers and magazines. The advent of mass amateurism does not mean the end of professionalism; it just means another vehicle for information will be developed.

There will always be people who want to read professional literature including magazines and newspapers like Time or The New York Times because they want to read good journalism. Open Source Software (OSS) is software that is provided free by a manufacturer that gives the same opportunity to the end users as commercial software. Linux is one good example because it is a group of software programs that many schools have used instead of Microsoft products. The reason OSS is popular is because there are no licensing agreements that must be updated yearly and schools can make as many copies as necessary; faculty and students can also copy this software to their home computers.

Shirkey says that OSS is more an ecosystem that can tolerate mistakes easier than commercial software systems. Because Linux uses source codes and the company gives the codes to users, people can customize the software to meet the organizations’ needs. The history of OSS shows that it will not take over commercial software because it still has some challenges. Shirky continually showed how different types of OSS was used but how it was given as an alternative for organizations who did not have the money to