IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 18

books
generated content isn't 'content' at
all, in the sense of being created for
general consumption, any more than
a phone call between you and a sibling
is 'family-generated content.' Most of
what gets created on any given day is
just the ordinary stuff of life-gossip,
little updates, thinking out loud-but
now it's done in the same medium
as professionally produced material.
Unlike professionally produced
material, however, Internet content
can be organized after the fact."
No one coordinates Flickr's
6 million to 8 million users. Yet
Flickr had the first photos from the
2005 London Transport bombings,
beating the traditional news media.
Why? People with cellphone cameras
uploaded their photos to Flickr. They
coordinated themselves using tools
that Flickr provides. This is the
sort of impromptu organization the
Internet is ideally suited for. Shirky
explains how these moments are
harbingers of a future that can selforganize without formal hierarchies.
These nonorganizations allow for
contributions from a wider group
of people. A newspaper has to pay
someone to take photos; it can't be
bothered to hire someone to stand
around London underground
stations waiting for a major event.
Similarly, Microsoft has to pay
a programmer full time, and
Encyclopedia Britannica has to pay
someone to write articles. But Flickr
can make use of a person with just

Math Kisser
Actress-mathematician-author
Danica mcKellar has a new
book out called Kiss my math:
showing Pre-algebra Who's boss,
encouraging math interest in
middle school girls. Best known as
winnie cooper in the 1988-1993
tV series "the wonder Years,"
mcKellar went on to major in
math at ucLA, collaborate on

here CoMes
everybody:
The Power of
organizing
wiThouT
organizaTions
By Clay Shirky; Penguin
Press, 2008; 336 pp.;
US $25.95; ISBN:
978-159420153-0

one photo to contribute, Linux can
harness the work of a programmer
with little time, and Wikipedia
benefits if someone corrects just
a single typo. These aggregations
of millions of actions that were
previously below the Coasean
floor have enormous potential.
But a flash mob is still a mob.
In a world where the Coasean
floor is at ground level, all sorts of
organizations appear, including ones
you might not like: violent political
organizations, hate groups, Holocaust
deniers, and so on. (Shirky's discussion of teen anorexia support groups
makes for very disturbing reading.) This has considerable implications for security, both online and off.
We never realized how much our
security could be attributed to distance
and inconvenience-how difficult it is
to recruit, organize, coordinate, and
communicate without formal organizations. That inadvertent measure of
security is now gone. Bad guys, from
hacker groups to terrorist groups,
will use the same ad hoc organizational technologies that the rest of us

a theorem on magnetism, and
speak before the u.s. congress,
while guest-starring on "the west
wing," "NYpD Blue," and "How i
met Your mother." the new book,
a continuation of her preteen
best seller math Doesn't suck,
focuses on pre-algebra and jobs
that use math. "i'm making girls
feel less intimidated by math,"
says mcKellar. "i want them
thinking about it as more than just
something you do in school."

NA * Ieee spectrum * september 2008

do. And while there has been some
success in closing down individual
Web pages, discussion groups, and
blogs, these are just stopgap measures.
In the end, a virtual community is
still a community, and it needs to be
treated as such. And just as the best
way to keep a neighborhood safe is for
a policeman to walk around it, the best
way to keep a virtual community safe
is to have a virtual police presence.
Crime isn't the only danger; there is
also isolation. If people can segregate
themselves in ever-increasingly
specialized groups, then they're less
likely to be exposed to alternative
ideas. We see a mild form of this in
the current political trend of rival
political parties having their own
news sources, their own narratives,
and their own facts. Increased
radicalization is another danger
lurking below the Coasean floor.
There's no going back, though.
We've all figured out that the
Internet makes freedom of speech a
much harder right to take away. As
Shirky demonstrates, Web 2.0 is
having the same effect on freedom
of assembly. The consequences of
this won't be fully seen for years.
Here Comes Everybody covers some
of the same ground as Yochai Benkler's
Wealth of Networks. But when I had
to explain to one of my corporate
attorneys how the Internet has changed
the nature of public discourse, Shirky's
book is the one I recommended.
-Bruce Schneier

For more information, visit
http://www.kissmymath.com.
And read more about mcKellar
this December in the upcoming issue of ieee Women in
engineering magazine.
-susan Karlin
Kiss My MaTh: showing
Pre-algebra who's boss
By Danica McKellar; Hudson Street
Press, 2008; 352 pp.; US $24.95;
ISBN: 978-159463049-1

www.spectrum.ieee.org

http://www.kissmymath.com http://www.spectrum.ieee.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum September, 2008