Here Comes Everybody Chapter 10

The example of the many failing Meetup groups on page 236 is in line with Shirky's theme that things in the digital realm are cheaper -- including failure.  "Meetup shows that with low enough barriers to participation, people are not just willing but eager to join together to try things, even if most of those things end up not working," on the next page.

Over on page 242, the emergence of open source software is a better example of the by products of new communications technology than the priest abuse scandals in 1992 verus 2002.  In the priest abuse cases, there were more confounding factors.  In the software world, the few isolated programmers creating shareware in the early 1990's blossomed into computer-communicating amorphous clouds of hackers creating their own operating systems, web browsers, and office program suites in the early 2000's.

From page 249, on the advantage enjoyed by open source software, in which only volunteer time, not money is invested in each program:  "...In world where anyone can tr anything, even the risky stuff can be tried eventually.  If a large enough populaion of users is tring things, then the happy accidents have a much higher chance of being discovered."