Here Comes Everybody

I've just been reading Here Comes Everybody - Clay Shirky's book on how the internet and technology is changing group dynamics. The church may not be a corporation (though Clay describes it as "just as hierarchial") but is based on people groups. As human interaction, communication and culture change, what will the church's response be?


The book's main premise (with plenty of examples) is that the convenience and reach of the internet fundamentally changes the way humans can interact in groups. At one end of the spectrum this increases the corporate efficiency, and at the other end this allows previously 'too hard' activities to become possible. As Clay puts it,

"we didn't realise how many things were [possible] because, prior to the current era, the alternative to institutional action was usually no action. Social tools provide a third alternative: action by loosely structured groups, operating without managerial direction and outside the profit motive."

Put more simply, "The internet means you don't have to convince anyone else that something is a good idea before trying it" and "since anyone can act, the ability of people in charge to kill initiatives through inaction is destroyed."

This obviously means that lots of things are tried and fail. But also, a lot of things that institutions could never do are now possible. Clay makes frequent reference to Wikipedia, the largest, most comprehensive and most up-to-date encyclopedia, constructed almost entirely from volunteer effort.

Of course, it does sometimes require new thinking. Clay tells his own story about a company's closed-minded attitude to a new idea: "They didn't care if it worked in fact, because they were already sure it wouldn't work in theory." Of course, it did work and that company went slowly out of business.

This brings me to the church example cited in the book. Sadly, it's a story of the church trying to prevent a cross-parish group from forming; resisting the changes of the current age, and trying to exert authority/dominance by controlling the communication between churchgoers. Suffice to say, it didn't go well (though the same strategy had worked 10 years earlier when technology was less prevalent).

And that's one of the lessons of the book. Time moves on. It's not like a car trip, where one can pull over and stop. It's more like a paddling a kayak in a fast-moving river where "our principal challenge is not to decide where we want to go, but rather to stay upright as we go there."

But probably the best summation comes right near the end of the book. Speaking about young people "they know fewer useless things than we do". Clay expands on what he means by this:

I know that newspapers are where you get your political news and how you look for a job. I know that music comes from stores. I know that if you want to have a conversation with someone, you call them on the phone. I know that complicated things like software and encyclopedias have to be created by professionals. In the last fifteen years I've had to unlearn every one of those things and a million others, because they have stopped being true.

My question is whether the church will cling fearfully to the past, or have the courage to unlearn things that are no longer true, and embrace a new reality.

[Justin from CMS also has a great review on this one]