When taking a look at Shirky’s first chapter in “Here Comes Everybody”, we get to see just how the internet is changing the landscape in which we communicate. Long gone are the days in which actual physical contact is necessary in order to put together ideas. In Chapter 2, we take a look at the hierarchical structure of firms and how an emphasis on management and organizational structure can be costly. We take a look at how the internet can completely bypass this idea and attain a highly efficient and productive end goal for a fraction of the cost. The internet has given us the ability to maximize our ability by incorporating a “one for all and all for one” mentality. 

 

There is a quote by college basketball coaching legend John Wooden that reads, “It is amazing how much can be accomplished if no one cares who gets the credit.” I feel like this is the attitude that goes toward the success of a company like Wikipedia. Instead of having a hierarchical structure, Wikipedia employs a wide scale collaboration effort from countless contributors and has created the worlds largest online encyclopedia. What allows all the information on Wikipedia to be available free of charge is the volunteer work that goes into the business. The reason why Wikipedia is so successful is because the people that put all the time into creating these pages are doing it on their own time. They have to have a strong enough interest in the topic in order to put forth their own time and effort into publishing pro-bono work. Often times, you will see that a persons best work comes out not when they are compensated or have to work with deadlines, but when they are genuinely interested in the topic enough to make the effort for personal satisfaction. 

What Shirky points out is that a company like Wikipedia would not even be close to possible without the internet. The internet brings together the largest range of people and combines the greatest number of interests. This produces a wealth of both useful and not so useful information. A large number of things you see on Wikipedia are topics no company would dream of paying their employee to write about. That in itself is the magic of Wikipedia. It is able to combine the desire to learn and the desire to teach and make itself readily available for anyone.