The Power of Many: How the Living Web Is Transforming Politics, Business, and Everyday Life [Hardcover]

Christian Crumlish (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0782143466 | ISBN-13: 978-0782143461 | Publication Date: September 28, 2004 | Edition: 1

"A lot of people are starting to use the Internet to reconnect themselves to their neighborhood, their community, and the world. The Power of Many is a great survey of the way this is really being accomplished by many individuals working together."
—Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist.org

"What a fascinating topic. If you're interested in the future, the past, or the present, then you should read this book."
—Scott Heiferman, Co-Founder of Meetup.com and Fotolog.net

The development of social networks on the Web touches countless aspects of our everyday lives. With instant access to people of similar mindsets, near or far, we can readily form partnerships with more people and in more ways than ever before. It's now possible to use Internet tools to organize a rally, energize a political campaign, arrange a date, join a support group, or sell a product, as naturally as we use a phone.

Through a series of pertinent case studies and interviews with leading thinkers and doers in this rapidly evolving field, Christian Crumlish uncovers universal themes and lessons learned. He illustrates how we use peer-to-peer technologies--web services, blogs, mobile phone SMS, and more—to accomplish widespread goals. He also suggests how we can take even more advantage of these technologies to connect with people who have similar interests.

Discover how Howard Dean's campaign used the Internet to take a little-known candidate a long way. How activists arrange public meetings and drive letter-writing campaigns. How individuals find much-needed help for personal issues. How artists promote and air their creative genius. How business people and singles seek potential partners. And much, much more.

Here are just a few of the more than 60 experts, businesspeople, activists, and writers who share their insights:

• Futurist and best-selling author Howard Rheingold
• Scott Heiferman, founder of Meetup.com
• Executives from the American Red Cross, the Leukemia Society, and the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer
• Venture capitalist Joi Ito
• Official and unofficial bloggers for the Bush, Clark, Dean, and Kerry campaigns
• Researchers Elizabeth Lane Lawley and Mary Hodder

The Power of Many explores how people are using new methods of social computing to simplify the ways they locate others who share their interests and kindle face-to-face communication. It reveals the tools that make it nearly effortless for groups and individuals to accomplish significant results in the real world. By understanding these trends and techniques, we can identify where and how to apply them in own lives. See the companion website at www.thepowerofmany.com.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

"A lot of people are starting to use the Internet to reconnect themselves to their neighborhood, their community, and the world. The Power of Many is a great survey of the way this is really being accomplished by many individuals working together."
—Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist.org

"What a fascinating topic. If you're interested in the future, the past, or the present, then you should read this book."
—Scott Heiferman, Co-Founder of Meetup.com and Fotolog.net

The development of social networks on the Web touches countless aspects of our everyday lives. With instant access to people of similar mindsets, near or far, we can readily form partnerships with more people and in more ways than ever before. It's now possible to use Internet tools to organize a rally, energize a political campaign, arrange a date, join a support group, or sell a product, as naturally as we use a phone.

Through a series of pertinent case studies and interviews with leading thinkers and doers in this rapidly evolving field, Christian Crumlish uncovers universal themes and lessons learned. He illustrates how we use peer-to-peer technologies—web services, blogs, mobile phone SMS, and more—to accomplish widespread goals. He also suggests how we can take even more advantage of these technologies to connect with people who have similar interests.

Discover how Howard Dean's campaign used the Internet to take a little-known candidate a long way. How activists arrange public meetings and drive letter-writing campaigns. How individuals find much-needed help for personal issues. How artists promote and air their creative genius. How business people and singles seek potential partners. And much, much more.

Here are just a few of the more than 60 experts, businesspeople, activists, and writers who share their insights:

• Futurist and best-selling author Howard Rheingold
• Scott Heiferman, founder of Meetup.com
• Executives from the American Red Cross, the Leukemia Society, and the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer
• Venture capitalist Joi Ito
• Official and unofficial bloggers for the Bush, Clark, Dean, and Kerry campaigns
• Researchers Elizabeth Lane Lawley and Mary Hodder

The Power of Many explores how people are using new methods of social computing to simplify the ways they locate others who share their interests and kindle face-to-face communication. It reveals the tools that make it nearly effortless for groups and individuals to accomplish significant results in the real world. By understanding these trends and techniques, we can identify where and how to apply them in own lives. See the companion website at http://www.thepowerofmany.com.

About the Author

Christian Crumlish is a writer, consultant, and artist who has been involved in developing and writing about web technology for the last decade. He's one of the better-known bloggers and is well connected both in the social-software arena and among technically savvy political organizers. His previous books include Coffeehouse: Writings from the Web, The Internet for Busy People, and The Internet Dictionary.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Sybex; 1 edition (September 28, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0782143466
• ISBN-13: 978-0782143461
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #653,787 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Christian Crumlish has been participating in, analyzing, designing, and drawing social interactive spaces online since 1994. These days he is the curator of the Yahoo! design pattern library, a design evangelist with the Yahoo! Developer Network, and a member of Yahoo!'s Design Council.

He is the author of the bestselling The Internet for Busy People, The Power of Many, and Designing Social Interface with Erin Malone.

He has spoken about social patterns at BarCamp Block, BayCHI, South by Southwest, the IA Summit, Ignite, and Web 2.0 Expo.

Christian has a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Princeton. He lives in Oakland with his wife Briggs, his cat Fraidy, and his electric ukulele, Evangeline.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars entering the blogosphere, October 15, 2004

By 

Levi Asher "CEO, LitKicks.com" (Queens, New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Power of Many: How the Living Web Is Transforming Politics, Business, and Everyday Life (Hardcover)

The blog phenomenon is notable for its technical simplicity but social complexity. Christian Crumlish's "The Power of Many" is a friendly but serious and substantive invitation to join the increasingly influential and entertaining world known as the "blogosphere".

I've known Christian for years, and I know he's been living a bloggy existence for longer than almost anybody else(his "Breathing Room" journal was basically a proto-blog before anybody else cared about this format).

His knowledge of online culture goes deep, and it is clear that he wants to take his readers by the hand and make them feel comfortable in this strange new social sphere, where you can get a page built in an hour but might then spend days or weeks or months trying to understand what to do with it, how to meet others, how to get others to blogroll you, and how not to feel like a complete outsider in this friendly but fast-moving world.

I like it that the book is that it is organized by subject matter. How is the online scene improving political dialogue? That's one chapter. The impact of cyber-culture on arts and literature is another chapter, and so on. The book is a broad sweep across all human disciplines that are touched by online interactivity (which is to say, all human disciplines).

As always with Crumlish's books, the style is warm, human and approachable, and he manages to slip in a few good music references. It's also functional -- he knows that you are writing this book because there is something you want to get out of it, and he works hard to deliver what he thinks the reader needs.

This is the kind of book that gets your wheels turning -- and by the time I finished the first chapter I already knew I was going to follow the author's advice and begin working harder to transform my own online community (LitKicks.com) so that it fits better into the "blogosphere". I am convinced, and if you read this book I think you will be too.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the many, October 8, 2004

By 

Aldon Hynes "Orient Lodge Blogger" (Woodbridge, CT) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Power of Many: How the Living Web Is Transforming Politics, Business, and Everyday Life (Hardcover)

The other day I received my copy of The Power of Many by Christian Crumlish. I don't recall exactly when I first met Christian online. The earliest emails that I can find have from him are from December 2003. During this time, I was working as a volunteer for Howard Dean's presidential campaign.

In particular, I was working with DeanSpace, an effort to help many small groups easily set up powerful interconnected websites. A lot has happened since then. DeanSpace has evolved into CivicSpace (www.civicspacelabs.org). Kerry is now the Democratic nominee. My wife is now a candidate for State Representative in Connecticut (kimhynes.smartcampaigns.com). Many of us have been using our experiences from the Dean campaign to help other campaigns, and many people are fishing around for a good book to try and understand how the internet is changing politics and all aspects of our lives.

The Power of Many is the book you should read if you want to get a real, on the ground, grassroots perspective of what happened during the Dean campaign and what it means for our country today. Christian has done a great job of speaking with many bloggers and grassroots activists. He explains the actions and technology in a way that many can understand and appreciate.

For people who want to understand what my involvement was like, and the involvement of many others, start with The Power of Many.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The right place, the right time, the right questions, November 14, 2004

By 

Philip Wolff "Editor, Skype Journal" (Oakland, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Power of Many: How the Living Web Is Transforming Politics, Business, and Everyday Life (Hardcover)

This book has all the hallmarks of a classic. It's what happens when you drop a witty, cool, and curious observer into the maelstrom of a tsunami social change which is at and through its tipping point. Xian is like a great Sherlock Holmes who probes and interviews for facts and clues, for causes and effects. The decentralization of power, of information, of influence changes... everything. Pluralism is no longer just for politics. It's for the arts, and sciences, and community, and the workplace. Xian manages to find people who surf these waves of change, who're living it or making it happen, and gets you the inside view. And, like Holmes, he connects the dots. When you're done, you have a new way to think about your world, a context for connecting your own dots.