Give it to Mikey, he'll try anything

So Here Comes Everybody made me think of Mikey, you know from those old Life cereal commercials. Do you remember them? Well there are two boys that do not want to try the Life cereal, it is new and different and they are apprehensive... so what do they do? They get this kid named Mikey to try it because he will "try anything". Mikey does indeed try the cereal and guess what? He likes it! This makes the other two willing to try it as well.
I wonder where those three boys are now...are the two apprehensive boys still afraid to try new things? Is Mikey traveling the world in search of the next big thing? Who knows but one of the main messages of this book to me is that we all need to be more like Mikey, we need to try new things and see what is out there. We need to reach past the boundaries that we know in order to achieve our highest goals and ambitions. Would Sasha have gotten her phone back if Evan hadn't gone to the masses? Would Blitzkrieg have worked if the Germans didn't have the radios? Would they have lost that day? Would Wikipedia be the giant resource it has become today if someone had not realized Nupedia would never have gotten off the ground?
These are some questions that are raised in this book. What do I take away from it you ask? Well there are so many different little lessons but the constant theme is that the world is constantly changing, now more than ever. One of the most impacted areas is the way we communicate and learn information from others. It seems there is a shift to more social integration into our personal, work and educational lives and this book expands on that. With the click of a button I can tell people that I am tired and bored just as easily as another person can describe their experience in surviving a coup in their country or a catastrophic earthquake.
When loved ones went missing in the terrible Indian Ocean Tsunami a few years back they used the internet to post pictures of those missing. This would not have been possible twenty years ago. It helped people to get into contact much faster and families were able to find the survivors as well as confirm the dead.
This book along with this class have helped me to realize that we must explore the possibilities of the world around us and be willing to listen to what others have to teach us. I have learned I am capable of this movement into the new social mainstream Shirky talks about. I may even contribute to a Wikipedia page as he did. I need to be a Mikey in my own learning experience, willing to try and brave enough to know sometimes I will fail.