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

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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.

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.

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.

I regret that it took me so long to write this review, since I knew about the book before it came out. But since that time I have witnessed its premise proved true over and over again in the local political process. Something very special--new and not so new--is at work here. Today more than any time I can remember (including the worst of the '60s), responsible, hardworking citizens feel alienated and abandoned by the democratic process. What good can taking action do when such gigantic and powerful players are on the other side of the debate and show no respect for reasoned argument or even the rule of law? But pick a seemingly tiny, local problem--trash pickup or snacks in school vending machines or use of public parks--and here are issues for which my neighbors will go to meetings, pull out their wallets, and even endorse candidates. Cluster those interests in a vertical website, allow some accretion to take place, combine those online credit card micro-donations, and suddenly thousands of like-minded folks find out that they have clout--and lots to talk about not only on trash disposal, snacks, and recreation but also on sewers, land development, zoning, business licensing, taxation, representation, and war and peace.

Hail Crumlish Caesar! Long live the Republic! Blogs are free speech!

Christian Crumlish (wonder if that is his real name?) has been involved in web technology for ten years or more, so most of the technical stuff did not pertain to my small amount of knowledge of the Internet. He used too many personal experiences throughout the book and tells how so many people responded to his inqueries and he listed their web sites free of charge and put in a plug for all of his endeavors. He's really into the social scene online, though his To Briggs speaks louder than words.

There is too much about blogs and political sites. All of that is in the past now, and it is time to move on to the next election and spend time developing something for us not so well-developed computer users. He has written THE INTERNET FOR BUSY PEOPLE and THE INTERNET DICTIONARY. In this book, he has a glossary but most of it is Latin to me, and an Index which was helpful.

Now, down to my level, e-mail still 'feels' relatively private, although that is generally an illusion. I know that it is not exactly protected, but who would want to read through a stranger's communications with his friends? That is an invasion of privacy in the worse scenario. E-mail didn't catch on in a big way until there were nice graphical point-and-click interfaces and seamless Internet connections backing everything up. I was trained (8 months of hard work, 5 days a week) in Computers and Word Processing, yet I was not prepared for the actual work I did as a Temp at factories. It was all different and all interesting and was a joy to be able to use a computer for pay. But, I have noticed at the public computers in libraries and free labs are full of homeless people sending e-mail, and some of the not-so-nice men looking at porn. These people have no training even in typing, yet they are able to send and receive messages to people far away.

The fallacy of online communications is that so many use false identities. On Dateline, an NBC reporter used several aliases (Justin Case, that type of foolishness) to film a scam, which seemed to me unethical, but the people who claimed to be wealthy and in need at the same time, needing cash which would be repaid in multiple times were as false as his monikers. It is a shame that the web has come to this and a decent person is not safe. I have a friend who does only email on Yahoo and she keeps having to change her address using initials instead of her real name. That's sad!

The solitary writer of yesterday gives way to 'the power of many' on the Internet. Me, I'm a loner; if I can't be a leader, I will influence politicians and important people one-on-one.

Christian Crumlish's "The Power of Many" changed my life, but more over changed my view on how the living web affects organizations and community organizing. I work for a political organization and everything that Mr. Crumlish discusses in his book, I'm currently examining and seeing how it can be applied in a political context. For the most part, everything we've tried concerning community building and decentralization, has come with much success.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to move their business, corporation, or organization into the 21st century. The future is now and Christian Crumlish had effectively documented how it can improve social networking and overall interaction with the "living web."

Xian is a charming and engaging writer, and patiently takes the reader through the history of online communication, with the help of an extensive glossary. Building on that base of understanding, he brings the reader up to speed on the state of the art of the many facets of web connectivity: blogs, social software and social networking, instant messaging, newsgroups and discussion groups, wikis, filesharing, chat, community, collaboration and scheduling tools, and people-finders. Although the book is designed for those that are not currently tapping into the online Power of Many, it's a fun read for us online residents as well, kind of reassuring to know you really sort of understand what the Internet is all about and where it's going.

But the real value of the book is a series of very important insights about relationships and the technology that attempts to facilitate them, scattered like diamonds throughout the book. I call them Xian's Principles of Online Connectivity, and they are:

1. The Internet is still too hard for most people to use.
2. Blogs are just the best current disintermediation tool, and other social networking tools will only succeed when they, too, cut out the middleman.
3. All communications and networking is moving to peer-to-peer.
4. Real communities are only formed when people meet face-to-face to work toward some specific common goal.
5. Tremendous advantage accrues to anyone who pioneers a new technology successfully.
6. Online networking is great for support groups, but dreadful for changing the system, and often detracts from actually getting things done.
7. Information, like ideas, is worth nothing; it's doing something with it that creates all the value.
8. Artificial Intelligence doesn't work in matters of taste.
9. There is no useful taxonomy of relationships.
10. Social networking tools are largely redundant for bloggers, but for others they're essential to establish online presence.

These important ideas alone, and the thoughtful discussion surrounding them, justify the price of this book.

Xian also implies that messaging, publishing and filing are all just moving bits from A to B, and that software should handle them all the same way, simply. He also touches on a point that the transition from online communication to face-to-face or even voice-to-voice communication is terribly jarring, and sometimes doesn't work despite the best efforts of the conversants. Each of these ideas could merit a whole book by themselves.

Good stuff. In the interest of full disclosure, I acknowledge I was a fan of Xian's work before I read the book, and he was kind enough to acknowledge me as an inspiration for the book.

This is an odd little "how to organize" guide aimed at unrepentant flower-children. Each tip for 'using the Internet' is exemplified by a left wing political activity: the Howard Dean presidential campaign, Michael Moore, MoveOn, and various fringe groups.