The Hindu Business Line : With social tools, love is a renewable building material

What is common to “building an airplane or a cathedral, performing a symphony or heart surgery, raising a barn or razing a fortress”? All these require the distribution, specialisation, and co-ordination of various tasks among several individuals, explains Clay Shirky in ‘Here Comes Everybody’ ( www.landmarkonthenet.com ).

New technology enables new kinds of group-forming, he says. With ‘social software’ such as phone, e-mail, web page or discussion forum, we have a remarkable ability ‘to share, to co-operate with one another, and to take collective action, all outside the framework of traditional institutions and organisations,’ the author declares.

Group-forming is ‘ridiculously easy’ with the Internet and camera-phones, says Shirky, and it does matter because the desire to be part of a group that shares, co-operates, or acts in concert is a basic human instinct that has always been constrained by transaction costs.

We can, therefore, now see ‘an explosion of experiments with new groups and new kinds of groups,’ he hopes.

It may be disturbing for the tradition-bound to know that new communication capabilities are also changing social definitions that are tied to professions.

For instance, “the amateurisation of the photographers’ profession began with the spread of digital cameras generally, but it really took off with the creation of online photo hosting sites.”

And, to the possible chagrin of many of my ilk, the title of a chapter in the book reads, ‘Everyone is a media outlet.’

Globally free publishing is making public speech and action more valuable, even as its absolute abundance diminishes the specialness of professional publishing, observes Shirky.

This development is not like the story of the automobile, where an invention moved from high cost to low cost, so that it went from being a luxury to being a commonplace possession, he distinguishes.

“Rather, this technology story is like literacy, wherein a particular capability moves from a group of professionals to become embedded within society itself, ubiquitously, available to a majority of citizens.”

Communication tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring, the author finds. “The invention of a tool doesn’t create change; it has to have been around long enough that most of society is using it. It’s when a technology becomes normal, then ubiquitous, and finally so pervasive as to be invisible, that the really profound changes happen.”

For today’s young people, our new social tools have passed ‘normal’ and are heading to ‘ubiquitous,’ and ‘invisible’ is coming, Shirky forecasts.

If you wonder what can be the motivation for collaborative production, he explains that the first impetus is ‘a chance to exercise some unused mental capacities,’ as in the case of Wikipedia. The second reason is vanity, that is, ‘making a mark on the world,’ such as with ringtones and screensavers.

More important is the third motivation: ‘the desire to do a good thing.’ People are happy to co-operate without needing financial reward, the way it happens in the Wiki world.

There’s an increasing amount of evidence, says Shirky, that specific parts of our brain are given over to making economically irrational but socially useful calculations. Studies have found that relying on non-financial motivations may actually make systems more tolerant of variable participation.

The author discovers that, with social tools, love has become a renewable building material, and a lot less private.

“Now we can do things for strangers who do things for us, at a low enough cost to make that kind of behaviour attractive, and those effects can last well beyond our original contribution.”

When people care enough, they can come together and accomplish things of a scope and longevity that were previously impossible, Shirky concludes. “They can do big things for love.”

Highly reassuring.

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