Convening But Not Controlling

I had never heard of Clay Shirky before I saw this talk on TED, but I am definitely going to pay attention now. He talks at first about the difference between one-to-many or one-to-one communication that we’ve had in the past (print, telephones, recorded media) vs. the many-to-many model we have now (with Twitter, the web, etc.). He goes on to analyze how organizations or countries that try to censor and control such citizen-powered communication end up failing miserably (i.e. China), whereas organizations that “convene but do not control” their citizens succeed spectacularly (i.e. the Barack Obama 2008 campaign). I am going to watch this over again a few times within the next few months and try to really absorb the concept. Perhaps it’s worth a look to you as well.