GroshLink

How about PR and making "must attend" movie openings, e.g., Marketing ‘Tron: Legacy’ Brings the Hardest Sell Yet (Brooks Barnes, NY Times. 7/26/2010). http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/business/media/26tron.html).

“If this thing isn’t a hit,” said John Juarez, a Comic-Con attendee, “somebody at Disney is going to have a lot of explaining to do.”

Yes, it's a business with the importance of getting material on screen which will sell and being sure to lock-down advance ads (Brooks Barnes. "Screenvision to Revamp Preshow Ads at Cinemas." NY Times. 7/26/2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/business/media/26screenvision.html).  Some complementary thoughts shared in yesterday's post: "A fan of a critic ...," http://groshlink.net/archives/2010/07/26/a-fan-of-a-critic-.... 

One of several trailers emphasizing a variety of threads:  http://www.youtube.com/v/L9szn1QQfas

Do you remember in 1982 when we heard, "In the future video game battles will be a matter of life or death"?  I think that I liked Jeff Bridges more "back in the day."

Trailer: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084827/. 

I really appreciated A. O. Scott's "Everybody’s a Critic of the Critics’ Rabid Critics," (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/movies/25scott.html, NY Times, 7/21/2010), generated by the reviews of "Inception."  Below's his "conclusion," opening up further reflection/conversation.  

Film culture on the Internet does not only speed up the story of a movie’s absorption of a movie into the cultural bloodstream but also reverses the sequence. Maybe my memory is fuzzy, or maybe I’m dreaming, but I think it used to be that “masterpiece” was the last word, the end of the discussion, rather than the starting point.

But in this case we end up with where we should have started, wondering what the movie is about, what it means, puzzling over symbols and plot points. It’s almost as if we’re all in a movie that’s running backward, like “Memento.” Which was totally overrated. Unless it was a masterpiece. I’m going to have to see it again.

When I shared Scott's article with Theresa, she mentioned her agreement with the over-rated nature of the current review structure (in both positive/negative directions).  With regard to the question of when a "piece" becomes a "masterpiece," she used the illustration of the Beatles, i.e., when did the Beatles become such a monumental band ("a masterpiece" or those which churned out "masterpiece" albums and/or songs)?  

So, we find "masterpiece" too much for a new release (let alone use in a "pre-release" commentary).  Maybe in the larger culture, on-line critics provide the much needed yes/no filter to sift through the overwhelming stream of new media options.  It seems that some "take it all in" (or as much as they can) despite how bad it is, whereas others prioritize based on what is supposedly a "must see" by those they consider "well-informed."  I guess for us, other concerns set the stage (Note:  Earlier post related to "Inception," What do you dream about? Who is in your dream world? -- http://groshlink.net/archives/2010/07/20/what-do-you-dream-about).

As for "Inception," I'm afraid that at present I can envision/dream enough of it for myself.

Confession 1:  Scott's typically the first film review I read on new releases.  As such, I've read his review (http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/movies/16inception.html), along with some others (e.g., Steven D. Greydanus. Christianity Today. 7/16/2010. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/movies/reviews/2010/inception.html), and watched some trailers.  Result:  "Inception" has been wait listed for so we can enjoy the summer with our family (and extended family).  Nothing like the "masterpiece" of God's creation, God's story, family, friendships, the Body of Christ. ... which reminds me of a post which I wrote about "Inception" on July 20, What do you dream about? Who is in your dream world? (http://groshlink.net/archives/2010/07/20/what-do-you-dream-about).

Confession 2:  I don't want to come across as "holier" than the silverscreen and leave the impression that movies (and the media in general) have been taken out of our family's mix this summer.  So to come clean, in addition to the reading frenzy (some below, more coming a future post on this topic), recently ...  

• The twins enjoyed "Toy Story 3" with one of their Aunts.  Afterwards they 
  • turned in reading lists to Barnes & Nobles and Borders
  • secured a new pile of books and one more video to add to our family's crowded shelves
• Theresa and I rewatched "Amazing Grace."  Wow.  To God be the glory!  Note:  earlier post of related interest, http://groshlink.net/archives/2007/09/15/human-trafficking-and-enslavement-symposium.
• Harry Potter has received a lot of attention in text and film from others in the family.  Still not of interest to me. ... A post for another day.

Note: As part of a recent BIC-TALK conversation, an inquiry was made regarding French Huguenots. It became the genesis of the below post ;-)

I've met several descendants of French Huguenots, including the seminar instructor for my first term of Grove City College's Core Curriculum.  Although born in the United States, she had grown up in a family which had never disconnected from it's Huguenot faith, ethnicity, and culture (including speaking French). 

During my first year in college I had much to criticize with regard to the Christian faith.  I was wrestling with recent issues in the community of faith in which I had been raised and projected these concerns upon Christian Theology/Church History.  My instructor listened patiently, asked questions, shared her family's story (going back generations), lived as a Christ-follower, and pointed me to next steps in Christian community/exploration of faith (in particular choosing a local congregation which deeply opened the Word of God each week and taking a my second term of Core Curriculum with a faculty who could address/discuss my 'pile of questions).  What an inspirational picture of an Emerging Scholar.  To God be the glory!

If you are unfamiliar with Huguenots and are interested in learning about them this summer, a number of on-line resources are available. For example, Christian History & Biography has issue focused on "The Huguenots," http://www.ctlibrary.com/ch/2001/issue71/.  A couple articles of particular interest:

If you end up reading on the Huguenots while at the beach, cabin, park, or porch this summer, then let me know what you think about their faith journey as individuals, families, and/or a people.

When I was younger, I watched, dreamed, and imagined films like Inception (2010).  Furthermore, I wondered why everyone else wasn't generating similar dreams and desiring to jump into them (and their media creations) with me. 

Over the past couple years real life has become too gritty to regularly watch, dream, and imagine these type of realities. As such, I long for, dream, and strive toward much different realities:

• directed by the creation and the God's call as one stamped with the image of God, to "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." (Genesis 1:28)
• responding to the Fall and it's destructive nature (Genesis 3)
• traveling in exile/back again (again and again)
• prophetic word to our culture and cultural religious exercises
• sitting on the hills hearing the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7)
• living out the Kingdom of God as salt, light, leaven
• partaking/blossoming the fruit of the Spirit through the freedom in Christ (vs. the bondage of the sinful acts of this present darkness/world) -- Galatians 5
• stepping into the New Creation with family, friends, neighbors, and many more in local communities ... beyond local communities spanning not only geography/ethnicity, but time (Hebrews 11-12, Revelation 21-22)

Time by the Word, Spirit, witness (word/life) and Body of Christ to sow these seeds of transformation which rest upon the foundation of acknowledging the brokenness of human beings (individual, corporate) and offering ourselves up to the One who alone offers redemption/next steps for the future. That is the seed to plant.

To conclude, at present, This Time the Dream’s on Me (A.O. Scott. NY Times Movie Review. 7/15/2010), ‘Inception’ Exceeds Box-Office Dreams (Brooks Barnes. NY Times. 7/18/2010), and Inception's Official Website are all I need regarding the film.  But if you were one of the many to see the film (who helped make Inception #1 in North American theaters, so much so to give Leonardo DiCaprio his biggest opening ever), feel free to share your thoughts on it and lure me to the theater .... Otherwise, I'll wait until DVD ... or fill the gaps between the clips/trailers for myself :-0

"Something was crawling.  Worse still, something was coming out.  Edmund or Lucy or you would have recognized it at once, but Eustace had read none of the right books.  The thing that came out of the cave was something he had never even imaginged -- a long lead-colored snout, dull read eyes, no feathers or fur, a long lithe body that trailed on the ground, legs whose elbows went up higher than its back like a spider's, cruel claws, bat's wings that made a rasping noise on the stone, yards of tail.  And the lines of smoke were coming from its two nostrils.  He never said the word Dragon to himself.  Nor would it have made things any better if he had. ... In the first place Eustace (never having read the right books) had no idea how to tell a story straight." -- C.S. Lewis. "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader." HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.  1952.  From Chapter 6, 7.  

These two sections led to a brief, helpful conversation between myself and the twins regarding "reading the right books."  Now it turns out that the culture which Lewis is critiquing in Eustace, before "he began to be a different boy" (Chapter 7), failed.  For today children (even college students/young adults) enjoy much fantasy, but fail to engage with "exports and imports and governments and drains."  I guess this emphasizes the pendulum swings of culture.  But I would point out that fantasy comes largely through TV/film instead of reading/discussion.  Entering Narnia with the twins has reminded me that although "a picture speaks a 1000 words," the ones which we create in our mind by reading a series such as the Narnian Chronicles can be much better/benefical than the pictures which illustrate a book or fill major motion pictures.

A great walk through the storytelling ... maybe a little too much in the below YouTube piece (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIs3k4iKFjM), particularly for those who want to experience the film on their own. If you see it tonight/this weekend, let me know your thoughts.  Maybe there's some material for a seminar on the transition from high school to college ;-)

For now, I'm going to have to satisfy myself w/the reviews by the NY Times, http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/movies/18toy.html, and Christianity Today, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/movies/reviews/2010/toystory3.html. 

Of course, I have been enjoying various trailers/interviews spread across the internet and YouTube.

 

How many of you remember Mandela taking office in 1994?  What a change ... what an inspiration ... what a story.  For those that remember or have learned about this landmark event in history, how many of you remember the 1995 Rugby World Cup?

He was a prisoner who became a president. To unite his country, he asked one man to do the impossible. 

Have you seen the film (http://invictusmovie.warnerbros.com/dvd/index.html)?  What do you think about Invictus the poem?  Thoughts in process, feel free to beat me to the punch ;-)

Thank-you to Miller for passing along A "Duty to Die"? (Thomas A. Sowell, Real Clear Politics, 5/11/2010, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/05/11/a_duty_to_die_105521.html).  Below's the conclusion:

Much of what is taught in our schools and colleges today seeks to break down traditional values, and replace them with more fancy and fashionable notions, of which "a duty to die" is just one.

These efforts at changing values used to be called "values clarification," though the name has had to be changed repeatedly over the years, as more and more parents caught on to what was going on and objected. The values that supposedly needed "clarification" had been clear enough to last for generations and nobody asked the schools and colleges for this "clarification."

Nor are we better people because of it.

Quick comment:  Just received a copy of The Art of Dying: Living Fully into the Life to Come (Rob Moll, InterVarsity Press, 2010), below's an excerpt.  I desire to explore this topic further in a number of contexts, including our local congregation and our work with budding health care professionals at PSU-Hershey Medical Center. If you have insights/resources to share, please let me know. 

The spiritual preparation necessary for a good, faithful death accumulates slowly over a lifetime. A good death does not occur in a vacuum. Also necessary are a supportive family and caring spiritual community alongside a medical community able to provide quality care consistent with the goals of a patient. . . . Developing a community united about the values we should bring to the deathbed . . . grows slowly as we hear sermons and share stories, as we care for one another and think alone of the fact that one day we too will die. -- http://www.ivpress.com/title/ata/3736-cut.pdf

The other evening, I picked Unbreakable (2000) off the shelf to kind-of watch while folding some newsletters.  It's been awhile since I've considered this M. Night Shyamalan classic, which didn't reach the popularity of The Sixth Sense (1999) or Signs (2002).  I figured that Theresa wouldn't have interest, but she confessed that she'd only seen parts of the film and would see how it went.  Theresa's analysis: the movie ended too sharply. Note: trailer below, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_f1uCWKZQs.

I still find the irony of the "good guy's" inability to sense his proximity to "the most evil character in the film" of great interest.  Maybe if David Dunn (played by Bruce Willis) had not lied about receiving injury at the car crash years ago (so that he could "get his girl"), he would have been more "in tune" and not need to be "mentored" into his role by "Mr. Glass," (i.e., Elijah Price played by Samuel L. Jackson). 

A search for meaning permeates the characters of the film, even the director in his brief cameo.  Where do we find meaning?  What stories do we inhabit?  Are you ready for the Way, the Truth, and the Life?  More to write, but heading out the door to receive the Word of God as part of the people of God assembled as Elizabethtown Brethren in Christ.

As I shared on Facebook, I left the island during the 2nd season. I'm curious as to what my friends who are still on the island think about re-engagement. Should I give Lost a 2nd chance by reading on-line series summaries and watching the end of the series OR watching the seasons on disc?

PS. Any more responses to As Lost Ends on ABC, Mythology Trumps Mystery?

Lost has turned fans into critics and critics, including this one, into semiprofessional fans, and in both cases you can sense that some exhaustion has set in. The mood among many of the show’s followers as they confront Sunday’s finale seems to be a mixture of regret and relief. Whatever happens ... (As Lost Ends on ABC, Mythology Trumps Mystery, Mike Hale, NY Times, 5/20/2010)

 

 

In case you haven't already come across it, I have another post on Wisdom Chaser: Finding My Father at 14,000 Feet (Nathan Foster. InterVarsity Press. 2010) at the ESN Blog.  Visit Wisdom Chaser: Insights on Parent-Child Relationships.

 

Due to the press of time, I did little else than page through Crucial Confrontations:  Tools for resolving broken promises, violated expectations, and bad behavior (Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Al Switzler, Ron McMillan. McGraw-Hill Companies: 2004).  But maybe that was all it was worth as it builds upon Crucial Conversations and I am not currently looking for tools for Crucial Confrontations. Praise God!  Below is the pattern (maintained with focus/flexibility):

• Work on yourself first:  Ask what you want and if this is a crucial confrontation to enter (don't make excuses), Master Your Stories
• Confront with safety:  Describe the Gap, Make it Motivating, Make it Easy
• Move to action:  Agree on a plan to follow-up

Makes sense.  Time's up.  I'll return when time permits. 

As you may summize from my post Stack of Kerry Patterson, I entered Crucial Conversations: Tools for talking when stakes are high (Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Al Switzler, Ron McMillan. McGraw-Hill Companies: 2002) with some skepticism.  None-the-less, I was willing to give Vital Smarts a second try and it was worth it.

What is a crucial conversation?

A discussion between two or more people where (1) stakes are high, (2) opinions vary, and (3) emotions run strong (p.3).

How does we approach crucial conversations?

• Avoid
• Face and handle poorly
• Face and handle well (p.3)

Yes, so what do the authors recommend with regard to handling crucial conversations well?  They begin by outlining why things go wrong.

• Our design [Note:  this is defined socially, adding material on the Fall & Original Sin would improve this section]
• Pressure
• Stumped, i.e., don't know where to start 
• Self-defeating responses

Then they point out "changing structures and systems alone did little to improve performance" [in organizations]. ... In the best companies, everyone holds everyone else accountable -- regardless of level or position.  The path to high productivity passes not through a static sytem, but through face-to-face conversations at all levels. ... In truth everyone argues about important issues.  But not everyone splits up.  It's how you argue that matters." (p.10-11).  Amen!  Preach it!  An excellent introduction to "Mastering Crucial Conversations:  The Power of Dialogue."

What is dialogue?

The free flow of meaning between two or more people.

The authors point out that we seek to grow the Pool of Shared Meaning, which is the birthplace of synergy, as we engage in crucial conversations (p.23).  And how do we go about crucial conversations:

• Start with the Heart [i.e., proper understanding of self (including wanted and unwanted in the crucial conversation) and relationship with those in crucial conversation]
• Learn to observe when one is part of a crucial conversation or has become a part of a crucial conversation.  
  • Physical, Emotional, Behavioral signs
  • Watch for safety concerns
  • Understand how you respond to stress
  • Establish dialogue create a safe environment for crucial conversation
    • Apologize
    • Contrast one's intentions versus how one has been understood/portrayed
    • CRIB (p.92)
      • Commit to seek Mutual Purpose
      • Recognize the Purpose Behind the Strategy
      • Invent a Mutual Purpose
      • Brainstorm new strategies
• Telling the story well by
  • Retracing your path to action:  action, feeling, telling story, see/hear
  • Telling the whole story instead of a clever story which takes one off the hook by creating villian(s), victim(s), and helpless
  • STATE (p.124)
    
    • Share your facts
    • Tell your story
    • Ask for others' paths
    • Talk tentatively
    • Encourage testing
• Listening to stories which are shared with you (p.159)
  
  • AMPP
    • Ask
    • Mirror
    • Paraphrase
    • Prime
  • ABC
    • Agree
    • Build
    • Compare
• Decide How to Decide (p.178)
  • Command
  • Consult
  • Vote
  • Consensus
  • "Determine who does what by when.  Make the deliverables crystal clear.  Set a follow-up time.  Record the commitments and then follow up.  Finally, hold people accountable to their promises.

In simplist terms, Learn to look.  Make it safe for everyone to contribute (p.180-181).

What is Clay Shirky's* formula for success?  The "fusion of a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain with the users.  The promise is the basic 'why' for anyone to join or contribute to a group.  The tool helps with the 'how' -- how will the difficulties of coordination be overcome, or at least be held to manageable levels?   And the bargain sets the rules of the road:  if you are interested in the promise and adopt the tool, what can you expect, and what will be expected of you?" (p.260, bold added)  And be sure to have the components in that order!

Simple?  No.  Why?  "[B]ecause the interactions among the different components is too complex" (p.261).  I particularly appreciated Clay Shirky pointing out that social media isn't selling a product, but calling people to come together to make a product.  I have found that to be the rub, sometimes leading a blog such as this to have more of the appearance of website.  Is it a failure?  No.  I'm not only feeding Groshlink into Facebook, but also I'm using it more and more as a resource for those interested in learning more about our ministry.  With regard to Facebook's move from 'fan' pages to 'like' pages, my gut reaction is that more 'members' decreases the potential for these groups to move toward direct 'real world' action.  The proposal of local clustering makes a lot of sense to me, one which I've thinking about for Emerging Scholars Network and Faculty Ministry.  Clay Shirky's two questions regarding tools are quite good:  'Does the group need to be small or large?' and 'Does it need to be short-lived or long-lived?'" (p.266)

What do we do with all the group forming, e.g., Facebook's 'like' feature?  How long until the young are displaced and find themselves in the midst of a culture in which they did not grow up?  Hope to have another post which draws together my overall response to the book.  I don't have the time to do such at present :-(  Maybe it's good to hang open in order to let the ideas flow, as long as I get back them.

*Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organization (Clay Shirky. NY, NY: Penguin Press, 2008).

Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 1
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 2
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 3
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 4
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 5
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 6
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 7-8
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 9-10

Clay Shirky's* exploration of the Six Degrees of Separation provided helpful clues on homophily (i.e., the grouping of like with like), developing dense and sparse connections at the same time, and how "bonding capital tends to be more exclusive and bridging capital more inclusive" (p.224).  "In Small World networks bonding tends to happen within the clusters, while bridging happens between clusters. ... Perhaps the most significant effect of our new tools, though, lies in the increased leverage they give the most connected people.  The tightness of a large social network comes less from increasing the number of connections that the average member of the network can support than from increasing the number of connections that the most connected people can support" (p.224).

The material at the end of chapter, drawn from Ronald Burt's "The Social Origins of Good Ideas" resonated with me.

"First, most good ideas came from people who were bridging 'structural holes,' which is to say people whose immediate social network included employees outside their department. Second, bridging these structural holes was valuable even when other variables, such as rank and age (both of which correlate for higher degrees of social connection), were controlled for. ... In Burt's analysis, a dense social network of people in the same department (and who were therefore likely to be personally connect to one another) seemed to create an echo-chamber effect. ... Burt found that bridging capital puts people at greater risk of having good ideas (his phrase) than do any individual traits. ... Even when the judicious use of social connections increases the proportion of good ideas, most ideas are still bad. It's not enough to find some way to increase the successful ideas. Some way needs to found to tolerate the failures too" (p.229-232).

Chapter 10:  Failure for Free seeks to address how social tools enable the volume produced by the publish-then-filter of websites such as Meetup which are successful because of the failures.  Linux and Wikipedia both illustrate the desire to work alongside a bigger project instead of doing something on one's own.  Meetup, like Flickr and Facebook, is an enabling platform.  "What the open source movement teaches us is that the communal can be at least as durable as the commercial.  For any given piece of software, the question, "Do the people who like it take care of each other?" turns out to be a better prediction of success than "What's the business model?"  As the rest of the world gets access to the tools once reserved for the techies, that pattern is appearing everywhere, and it is changing society as it does" (p.238-9).

Does Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organization leave the reader with a formula for success?  Turning to Chapter 11 to find out.

*Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organization (Clay Shirky. NY, NY: Penguin Press, 2008).

Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 1
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 2
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 3
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 4
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 5
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 6
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 7-8

Does Faster and faster, title of Chapter 7,* summarize your experience of speed of on-line communication?  Have you at times gotten run over by the volume of the communication or by groups coordinated via good communication (some version of a flash mob)?  I loved Clay Shirky's illustrations of the fall of the German Democratic Republic (1989), protests in Belarus (2006), German communication in Blitzkrieg (1940), the suprise punch of the Falun Gong (1999), dealing with flight delays, changes in loan stipulations, and Egyptain political activists.  Wanting to know more about Solving Social Dilemmas, I charged into Chapter 8.

Of course, Clay Shirky doesn't actually claim social tools can solve social dilmmas, instead he offers various ways in which social tools can amplify our ability to address them.  As a follower of Christ, I differ with his Tit-for-Tat approach to the extraordinary and daily use of the Prisoners' Dilemma.  We are to always confess and share the truth as part of our loving relationship with God.  Such a way of life supercedes our love of neighbor and self.  But I found his remedy to the concerns expressed by Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone (2000), quite on the mark.  Meetup is a great illustration of how affinity and proximity make a great match, particularly for those on the outside, seeking social opportunities. Due to Theresa's connections with MOPS, I'm not surprised that the most popular current group is Stay at Home Moms (SAHM).  But I would guess that Facebook's surge among SAHM has been taking a big chunk out of this audience. Can anyone give me insight on this topic?

Clay Shirky raises three issues regarding the new freedoms of on-line connection/assembly:

1. loss of jobs to specialists who are displaced by mass amateurism
2. loss of governmental (and journalistic) ability to control media output
3. "Networked organizations are more resilient as a result of better commuication tools and more flexible soical structures, but this is as true of terrorist netwroks or criminal gangs as of Wikipedians or student protestors.  This third loss, where the harms are not merely transition, leads to a hard question:  What are we going to do about the neagive effects of freedom. ... It used to be hard to get people to assemble and easy for existing groups to fall apart.  Now asembling latent groups is simple, and the groups, once assemble, can be quite robust in the face of indifference or deven direct opposition from the larger society.  (In some cases, that very opposition can strengthen the group's cohesion, as with the Pro-Ana[rexic] girls.)  When it is hard to form groups, both potentially good and bad groups are prevented from forming; when in becomes simple to form groups, we get both the good and the bad ones.  This is going to force society to shift from simply preventing groups from forming to actively deciding which existing ones to try to oppose, a shift that parallels the publish-then-filter pattern generally. -- p.210-211.

*Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organization (Clay Shirky. NY, NY: Penguin Press, 2008).

Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 1
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 2
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 3
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 4
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 5
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 6

My reference to the Body of Christ in Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 5, may have been looking for more of what we find in Chapter 6:  Collective Action and Institutional Challenges.*  Let's explore what "new tools give life to new forms of action" which "in turn challenge existing institutions, by eroding the institutional monopoly on large-scale coordination" (p.109, from Chapter 6 Abstract, italics in original).

Chapter 6:  Collective Action and Institutional Challenges is actually focused upon the church, i.e., the Roman Catholic Church.  In what manner?  Clay Shirky devotes significant attention to how on-line lay coordination (Voice of the Faithful, i.e., VOTF) in 2002 led to sexual scandal reforms/resignations which failed to occur even ten years previously when the issues were raised by the media in 1992. What enabled strong lay mobilization?  The ease of sharing information (versus expending the energy to collect/mail newspaper clippings and find out the the stories of others) along with the coordination of response through on-line resources and arranging public meetings.  

Later in the chapter, Clay Shirky also refers to the challenges of parish authority by the Episcopalian Church in Virigina when they brokeaway from the U.S. denomination, in protest to the ordination of the openly gay bishop Gene Robinson, to go under the Nigerian Anglican Church. 

What powerful tool do we find now in regular use, email.  The ability to go viral. 

social tools don't create collective action -- they merely remove the obstacles to it.  Those obstacles have been so significant and pervasive, however, that as they are being removed, the world is becoming a different place.  This is why many of the significant changes are based not on the fanciest, newest bits of technology but on simple, easty-to-use tools like e-mail, mobile phones, and websites, because those are the tools most people have access to and, critically, are comfortable using in their daily lives.  Revolution doesn't happen when society adopts new behaviors. -- p.159-160.

Clay Shirky's stringing me along as I anticipate Chapter 7:  Faster and faster is going to provide intense illustrations regarding Collective Action and Institutional Challenges.

*Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organization (Clay Shirky. NY, NY: Penguin Press, 2008).

Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 1
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 2
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 3
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 4
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 5

Personal Motivation Meets Collaborative Production.  Tell me more!  As many of you know, collaborative production rests in the soul of my understanding of being part of the Body of Christ. Let's dig in to find out what we can learn from Chapter 5 of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Oranizing Without Organization (Clay Shirky. NY, NY: Penguin Press, 2008):

Collaborative production, where people have to coordinate with one another to get anything done, is considerably harder than simple sharing, but the results can be more profound.  New tools allow large groups to collaborate, by taking advantage of nonfinancial motivations and by allowing for wildly differing levels of communication (p.109, Chapter Abstract, italics in original).

Yes, collaboration's harder than simply sharing.  Shirky focuses upon the history of and the continuing development of Wikipedia as a coordinating resource via the spontaneous division of a community of love (!).  He points out two (actually three) surprising lessons learned about collaborative web projects:

1.  the imbalance is the same shape across a huge number of different kinds of behaviors. ... The general form of a power law distribution appears in social settings when some set of items -- users, pictures, tags -- is ranked by frequency of occurrence.  You can rank a group of Flickr users by the number of pictures they submit.  You can rank a collection of pictures by the number of viewers.  You can rank tags by the number of pictures they are applied to.  All of these graphs will be in the rough shape of a power law distribution. ...

2.  the imbalance drives large social systems rather than damaging them.  Fewer than two percent of Wikipedia users ever contribute, yet that is enough to create profound value for millions of users. ... Though the word "ecosystem" is overused as a way to make simple situations seem more complex, it is merited here, because large social systems cannot be understood as a simple aggregation of the behavior of some nonexistent "average" user. ... Any system described by a power law, where mean, median, and mode are so different, has several curious effects.  The first is that by definition, most participants are below average.  This sounds strange to many ears, as we are used to a world where average means middle, which is to say where average is the same as the median.  You can see this "below average" phenomenon at work in the economist's joke:  Bill Gates walks into a bar, and suddenly everyone inside becomes a millionaire, on average.  The corollary is that everyone else in the bar also acquires a below-average income.  The other surpirse of such systems it that as they get larger, the imbalance between the few and the many gets larger, not smaller.  As you get more weblogs, or more MySpace pages, or more YouTube videos, the gap between the material that gets the most attention and merely average attention wil grow, as wil the gap beween average and median (p.124-125, 127).

Comment:  You can see where this is going with regard to the readership of most blogs, of which Groshlink fits the category.  But the comparatively low readership of the various pages with which Theresa and I are involved in provides the opportunity for concentrated, deeper connections.  The larger our friendship circles (such as on Facebook) and the number of groups we find ourselves managing, the lower our personal interaction.  How does one choose proper size and work toward those ends with a project such as the Emerging Scholars Network (ESN) blog?  Any proposals on an open project for InterVarsity's Graduate & Faculty Ministry related to ESN?  Is it best for us to turn attention to pilot campuses or through the door open for campuses to tap into a national open project?  Clarity in direction and fluidity in structure is important for growth/development.  Turning to Chapter 6:  Collective Action and Institutional Challenges.  Maybe that's more of what I was referring to at the beginning of this post.

Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 1
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 2
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 3
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 4

Three books by Vital Smarts sat beside Here Comes Everybody. 

 

 

• Influencer: The Power to Change Anything (Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Al Switzler, Ron McMillan, David Maxfield. McGraw-Hill Companies: 2007)
• Crucial Conversations: Tools for talking when stakes are high (Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Al Switzler, Ron McMillan. McGraw-Hill Companies: 2002)
• Crucial Confrontations:  Tools for resolving broken promises, violated expectations, and bad behavior (Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Al Switzler, Ron McMillan. McGraw-Hill Companies: 2004)

As they approached their due date, I took them to the library with the intention of skimming them, taking some notes, and returning them in one morning. How did I do?  What take aways do I have to pass along?

 (More)

Publish, Then Filter aptly titles Chapter 4 of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organization (Clay Shirky. NY, NY: Penguin Press, 2008).  Shirky begins with some samples of amateur internet writing.  Does my writing spill forth with a popular American conversational tone?  I hope not, but it is true that my writing for Groshlink has friends, ministry partners, and family in mind.  In many ways, I'm writing and you're reading something closer to an on-line family/ministry journal than a media source broadcasting to the whole world (although posted for/available to all with access). 

As the number of my on-line connections with family, friends, networks, blogs, and communities of practice/discussion grow, Shirky's observation that the web falls short in connecting an individual with a large grouping of people comes too close to home.  Even though I desire it not to be the case, a difference exists between conversing and broadcasting (p.95).

"The Web makes interactivity technologically possible, but what technology giveth, social factors taketh away.  In the case of the famous, any potential interactivity is squashed, because fame isn't an attitude, and it isn't technological artifact.  Fame is simply an imbalance between inbound and outbound attention, more arrows pointing in than out.  Two things have to happen for someone to be famous, neither of them related to technology.  The first is scale:  he or she has to have some minimum amount of attention, an audience in the thousands or more. (This why the internet version of the Warhol quote -- "In the furture everyone will be famous to fifteen people" -- is appealing but wrong.)  Second, he or she has to be unable to reciprocate. ... Though the possibility of two-way links is profoundly good, it is not a cure-all.  On the Web interactivity has no technological limits, but it does still have strong cognitive limits:  no matter who you are, you can only read so many weblogs, can trade e-mail with only so many people, and so on.  Oprah has e-mail, but her address would become useless the minute it became public." ... Egalitarianism is possible only in small social systems.  Once a medium gets past a certain size, fame is a forced move.  Early reports of the death of traditional media portrayed the Web as a kind of anti-TV -- two-way where TV is one-way, interactive where TV is passive, and (implicitly) good where TV is bad.  Now we know that the Web is not a perfect antidote to the problems of mass media, because some of those problems are human and are not amenable to technological fixes (p.91, 93-94).

Question:  Not just fame, but responsibility eats up time.  What do you think?  Is it old school to be a home-maker such as Theresa, network across campuses/involvement with the Emerging Scholars Network such I do, or lead a team of over a half-dozen staff such as myself while interacting with the larger structure of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.  

Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 1
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 2
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 3

Do you agree with the title of Chapter 3, Everyone is a Media Outlet?  The chapter abstract reads

Our social tools remove older obstacles to public expression, and thus remove the bottlenecks that characterized mass media.  The result is the mass amateurization of efforts previously required for media professionals - Clay Shirky. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organization. NY, NY: Penguin Press, 2008, p.55, original in italics.

Yes, I'm a media outlet, a representative of mass amateurization of efforts previously required for media professionals.  My high school newspaper staff experience has not been built upon with any accredited training/certification to become a skilled professional journalist.  A provocative benefit is that I'm neither confined by a narrow definition regarding news/media/journalism, potentially leaving me confused/blindsided by the rise of new forms of communication, nor sold on the defense of the profession caught in the midst of a societal exploration of new web platforms of gathering and communicating information ;-)  Groshlink, U-ConnectPGH, Emerging Scholars Blog, Facebook pages, and various other venues demonstrate my desire to find ways to get the word out* and walk alongside, while potentially being in the process of displacing, standard forms of media.**

A few quotes for your reflection: 

• Two things are true about the remaking of the European intellectual landscape during the Protestant Reformation:  first, it was not caused by the invention of moveable type, and second, it was possible only after the invention of movable type, which aided the rapid dissemination of Martin Luther's complaints about the Catholic Church (the 95 Theses) and the spread of Bibles printed in local languages, among its other effect. ... social effects lag behind technological ones by decades, real revolutions don't involve an orderly transition from point A to point B.  Rather, they go from A through a long period of chaos and only then reach B.  In that chaotic period, the old systems get broken long before new ones become stable.  In the 1400s scribes existed side by side with publishes but no longer performed an irreplaceable service.  Despite the replacement of their core function, however, the scribes' sense of themselves as essential remained undiminished (p.67-8).
• "Now that there is no limit to those who can commit acts of journalism, how should we alter journalistic privilege to fit that new reality?" ... Who is a professional photographer? ... What once was a chasm has not become a mere slope. ... An individual with a camera or a keyboard is now a non-profit of one, and self-publishing is now the normal case. (p.74)

Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 1
Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 2

I confess Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organization (Clay Shirky. NY, NY: Penguin Press, 2008) was hard to put down.  But was there anything of value in Chapter 2:  Sharing Anchors Community?  Glad you asked ;-)  The chapter begins with the assertion:

Groups of people are complex, in ways that make those groups hard to form and hard to sustain; much of the shape of traditional institutions is a response to those difficulties.  New social tools relieve some of those burdens, allowing for new kinds of group-forming, like using simple sharing to anchor the creation of new groups. -- p.25, original in italics.

1.  The Birthday Paradox.  Chemistry is not just applied physics.  Sociology is not just applied psychology.  The danger of adding employees to a late project (Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month).  The Nature of the Firm (Ronald Coase, 1937).

2.  On-line photo (Flickr) and info (blogging) sharing in unique situations ('95 Underground bombings, '04 tsunami, '06 Thai Military Coup). [Comment:  The lack of illustrations using Facebook stems from the book's release in 2008, before the widespread use of Facebook.  Waiting to see if Facebook will receive some mention later in the book.]

3.  Smaller organizations can run in a more ad hoc fashion.  But larger organizations demand the flow chart, developed by railroads in mid-19th century, which layers information and decision making. As a matter of fact, "not only does managing resources take resources, but management challenges grow faster than organizational size" (p.41). [Comment: I enjoy pioneering and seeing a small community/organization birthed.  The management of a larger community/organization can be difficult and demands checks to be sure it aligns with its purpose/vision which come more easily/naturally in a small, 'home grown' community/organization where everyone knows what everyone else is doing.]

4.  "An organization will tend to grow only when the advantages that can be gotten from directing the work of additional employees are less than the transaction costs of managing them" (p.43).

5  "Social tools [e.g., Flickr] provide a third alternative:  action by loosely structured groups, operating without managerial direction and outside the profit margin" (p.47). .... the ease of assembling, experimentation, and sharing with collaborative groups (p.48-49).  Hierarchy of information sharing, cooperating in collaborative production, collective action (p.49-54). [Question: How about parachurch ministries in which staff members raise their own support?]

Onto Chapter 3:  Everyone is a Media Outlet. 

Here Comes Everybody: Chapter 1

I enjoy soaking in and wrestling with material in a book.  If a book is not worth soaking in, it's hard for me to pick up and skim.  But after renewing Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organization (Clay Shirky. NY, NY: Penguin Press, 2008) twice and reminding myself that I should read over it in prep for an upcoming workshop on Social Media,* I bit the bullet.  

Clay Shirky, adjunct professor in NYU's graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), draws the reader into Chapter 1:  It Takes a Village to Find a Phone via a complex story of the creation of and response of an activistic virtual community to a lost/stolen cell phone.  Below are some quotes I spent time considering and pass along for you.

• Sociability is one of our core capabilities [as human beings] -- p.14.
• Society is not just the product of its individual members; it is also the product of constituent groups. The aggregate relationships lead to networks of astonishing complexity. ... and the ability to accomplish amazing feats (p.14-16).
• New technology enables new kinds of group-forming. ... When we change the way we communicate, we change society (p.17). ... forming groups has gotten a lot easier.  To put it in economic terms, the costs incurred by creating a new group or joining an existing one have fallen in recent years, and not just by a little bit.  They have collapsed.  ("Cost" here is used in the economist's sense of anything expended -- money, but also time, effort, or attention.) (p.18).
• Without a plausible promise, all the technology in the world would be nothing more than all the technology in the world (p.18).
• The difference between an ad hoc group and a company like Microsoft is management. ... If you want to organize the work of even dozens of individuals, you have to manage them (p.19). ... We are living in the middle of a remarkable increase in our ability to share, to cooperate with one another, and to take collective action, all outside the framework of traditional institutions and organizations (p.20-21). ... the difficulties that 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, we are free to explore new ways of gathering together and getting things done (p.22).

Question: Are you exploring new ways of gathering together and getting things done on-line OR is that a too idealistic?  Where technology is prevalent, does there exist a generational divide between those who embrace communities formed/supported through the new technology and those who do not?

*Query: Social Media, Community Development, Campus Ministry

Below's another challenging quote from the final chapter of Jon Acuff's Stuff Christians Like (Zondervan, 2010),* the context is a discussion of sharing true confession of sin/prayer requests ...

If I stop writing tomorrow this is the lesson which I'll cling to the most, When you go first, you give everyone in your church or your community or your small group or blog, the gift of going second.  It's so much harder to be first.  No-one knows what's off limits yet and you're setting the boundaries with your words.  You're throwing yourself on the honesty grenade and taking whatever fall out that comes with.  Going second is so much easier and the ease only grows exponentially as people continue to share, but it has to be started somewhere.  Someone has to go first and I think it has to be us.  Let's give the gift of going second. -- Jon Acuff's Stuff Christians Like (Zondervan, 2010).

Father, grant me the grace to follow the lead of your Son Christ Jesus and the direction of your Spirit and Word as part of the Body of Christ spanning history in all the contexts to which you have called me to serve.

*Earlier Stuff Christians Like excerpt posted at Who is carrying all that with you?, http://groshlink.net/archives/2010/04/17/who-is-carrying-all-that-with-you.

On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'  For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." -- Matthew 9:11-13

If you haven't already heard it, listen to WJTL's interview of Jon Acuff, author Stuff Christians Like (Zondervan, 2010).  Thanks to Christian Audio's free month of April posting, I've been listening to the book over the course of the past several weeks.

Some initial thoughts on Stuff Christians Like, more will be coming ;-)

1. Comment on Acuff's promo, "Do you think we Christians are weird? Me too. This book is for you." Yes, followers of Christ are weird and much to be pitied, if Christ has not be raised from the dead (I Corinthians 15:12-19).  But, I didn't grow up in and have only touched on the outskirts of the Evangelical subculture at which Acuff directs his satire, as such it probably wasn't as funny/liberating for me as I imagine it may have been for others.  I know it was not Acuff's intention, but it seems to me that it's hard for some of his material to not come across as mocking the faith/practices of some in these traditions.  I'd be interested in thoughts from other readers/listeners. Note:  You can browse the paper copy at http://browseinside.zondervan.com/index.aspx?isbn13=9780310319948.
2. Out of the whole book, I resonated most with Chapter 10, which follows Stuff Christians Like's Wednesday practice of turning to "more serious."  In particular, I appreciated the challenge to listen to the concerns of others. ... To ask, "Who is carrying 'all that' with you?"  This is the ultimate question of the Gospel because "everyone has an 'all that' that they're carrying." Yes, many times the answer is "no one," because it's hard to share our burdens (real, deep inner spiritual life) with others. 
3. Acuff challenges himself and the friend/follower of Christ Jesus not just to listen and not just to give a "drive-by Jesus," but to carry our friend's "all that" with them as they come to know our friend Jesus.  Unless one gives up/offers one's burdens, fears, anxieties, sin, and brokenness to God, life is overwhelming on the individual, familial, societal, and cosmic scale. We offer "all that" (and more) to the Son as as we enter relationship with the Father by the gift of the Word, Spirit, and Body of Christ.  This is an act of submission of our whole being and the transformation of our whole being to love God leading to proper love of neighbor, self, and creation. Later in the final chapter, Acuff summarizes the Gospel as "Be sick. Be loved." [That is, be who you are as you come to God to receive His love].