Here Comes Everybody

Found on Russell Davies

Page 22:

The old limits of what unmanaged and unpaid groups can do are no longer in operation; the difficulties that have kept self-assembled groups from working together are shrinking, meaning that the number and kinds of things groups can get done without financial motivation or managerial oversight are growing. The current change, in one sentence, is this: most of the barriers to group action have collapsed, and without those barriers, we are free to explore new ways of gathering together and getting things done.

Page 47:

Now that it has possible to achieve large-scale coordination at low cost, a third category has emerged: serious complex work, taken on without institutional direction. Loosely coordinated groups can now achieve things that were previously out of reach for any other organizational structure, because they lay under the Coasean floor.

The cost of all kinds of group activity – sharing, cooperating, and collective action – have fallen so far so fast that activities previously hidden beneath that floor are now coming to light. We didn’t notice how many things were under that floor, 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.