Gloria Ferris

This is Tim, writing for Gloria. We were both going over a book Carole Cohen gave Gloria to while away the hours at Metro, and we had an “aha” moment we wanted to share with all of you. Here’s a  excerpt from pages 47 & 48 of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations by Clay Shirky:

For the last hundred years the big organizational question has been whether any given task was best taken on by the state, directing the effort in a planned way, or by businesses competing in a market. This debate was based on the universal and unspoken supposition that people couldn’t simply self-assemble, the choice between markets and managed effort assumed that there was no third alternative. Now there is. Our electronic networks are enabling novel forms of collective action, enabling the creation of collaborative groups that are larger and more distributed than at any other time in history. The scope of work that can be done by noninstitutional groups is a profound challenge to the status quo.

The collapse of transaction costs makes it easier for people to get together–so much easier, in fact, that it is changing the world.