Have you felt a little overwhelmed by the rise of social media in the last few years? FaceBook, blogs, LinkedIn, Twitter… and the options continue to grow and proliferate. There’s an immediate question of course – how do I manage all of this? – but there’s a bigger one behind that: What does this mean for who we are and how we work in the world?
Clay Shirky’s a man to turn to for answers. His terrific book, Here Comes Everybody, talks about the impact of this new connectedness on how we live our lives – or, as he sums it up in the interview, “group action just got easier”. Clay’s been writing and thinking on the social and economic effects of internet technologies since the 1990s and his practice is focused on the rise of decentralized technologies – ways of connecting that bend the wired client server infrastructure that typically characterizes the web. On top of all of this, Clay’s the adjunct professor at NYU’s graduate interactive telecommunications program.
In this interview we discuss:
- The impact of this new connectedness on hierarchy (it’s not going away, but it’s changing…)
- The role of permission in allowing Great Work to flourish
- How and when being “matrixes” works… and when it doesn’t
- The overall strategy to consider in bringing a new level of social engagement to your organization
- What ‘practical surprises’ are – and why they matter
You can follow Clay on Twitter at @cshirky
The interviews are all between 25 and 30 minutes long.
You can either download them here as mp3s, or go to iTunes, type in “Great Work Interviews” and you’ll see them all there.
Listen to my interview with Clay Shirky
If you enjoyed this interview, you’ll also enjoy my interview with Keith Lippert
