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Cluetrain at 20

blogs.harvard.edu

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Re: Cluetrain at 20

#21

Post by antoinevg »

api wrote: post #15
Mizza wrote: post #12

There was a scene of very well-meaning academics and young people in Cambridge around the Free Software/Free Culture movement and the Berkman Center in the early/mid/late 00's. There was a lot of idealism and a belief that digital interconnectedness was going to change the world for good. At the time, it was really fun and inspiring to be a part of. I realize now that the leaders/notables of the movement were, for th…

We tend to overestimate the impact of technologies in the short term and underestimate them in the long term. The Internet visionaries overestimated how rapidly the Internet would change the status quo. Instead the status quo came and colonized the Internet. The night is young though, and we have generations coming up right now that don't know what one-way broadcast media even is. The printing press took a long time…

The irony is that the technical architectures with which the Internet can defend itself existed in the early 90's already.

My generation's despair was watching them being supplanted by the social media companies who provided platforms with a fraction of the capabilities and none of the user empowerment.

It's never too late to go back to federated architectures.

Re: Cluetrain at 20

#22

Post by draw_down »

colordrops wrote: post #10
PakG1 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is like one of those movies that did not age well. Sort of like Mighty Ducks and Fight Club.

Oh I was about to watch Fight Club again, sad to hear that it didn't age well.

I think there are things about it that still work, like the scene where the narrator breaks down how recalls work. And, especially, the meet-cute where the narrator makes the "single-serving friend" joke, and Durden replies "That's very clever. How's that working out for you, being clever?" I think that's one of the best lines in a movie ever.

Re: Cluetrain at 20

#23

Post by MockObject »

Mizza wrote: post #19
api wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We tend to overestimate the impact of technologies in the short term and underestimate them in the long term. The Internet visionaries overestimated how rapidly the Internet would change the status quo. Instead the status quo came and colonized the Internet. The night is young though, and we have generations coming up right now that don't know what one-way broadcast media even is. The printing press took a long time…

I'd like to think that, but I don't. I haven't seen any evidence for any meaningful resistance. I think it's very possible that the internet will just continue to get worse and worse and worse. It's already worse than television ever was. The only real resistance I can think is Tor, but it turns out that the cost of being able to buy psychedelics online is global child rape gangs and a nationwide Fentanyl problem. No…

We are still in the Microsoft era of social media; people using the major platforms out of inertia and network lock-in. But there's no reason to believe the next generation of digital natives will have any such inertia, and could easily adopt distributed protocols over centralized walled-garden platforms.

Re: Cluetrain at 20

#24

Post by Alex3917 »

Mizza wrote: post #19
api wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We tend to overestimate the impact of technologies in the short term and underestimate them in the long term. The Internet visionaries overestimated how rapidly the Internet would change the status quo. Instead the status quo came and colonized the Internet. The night is young though, and we have generations coming up right now that don't know what one-way broadcast media even is. The printing press took a long time…

I'd like to think that, but I don't. I haven't seen any evidence for any meaningful resistance. I think it's very possible that the internet will just continue to get worse and worse and worse. It's already worse than television ever was. The only real resistance I can think is Tor, but it turns out that the cost of being able to buy psychedelics online is global child rape gangs and a nationwide Fentanyl problem. No…

> I don't see any technological way out of this mess.

In another 10 years computers may be fast enough to make No Code actually viable at scale, which will enable entirely different types of people to start making things for the first time.

And even failing that, we now have muppets teaching 3-year-olds the basics of coding. Not everyone is going to know how to code in 20 years, but the percentage of new high school graduates who can make a webpage might be comparable to the percentage who can read.

The basic reason the tech industry is fucked up is that the FAANG companies have a monopoly on discovery right now. But that's not going to last forever.

Re: Cluetrain at 20

#25

Post by bitwize »

I think that a huge component of the "Culture War" is large media (game, movie, etc.) companies colluding with the press to mitigate the effects of internet word of mouth by discrediting independent internet-based sources that are not part of the "access journalism" payola network and that foster discussion between ordinary consumers. And the surest way to discredit an organization is to accuse it of being a safe harbor for child molesters, serial sexual harassers, racists, Nazis, the "alt-right", etc.

The principles of Cluetrain work -- provided that there exist organic online communities where consumer discussion can take place. It makes sense that in order to preserve the status quo, preventing such communities from ever forming or reaching critical mass is a top priority for the BigCos.

Re: Cluetrain at 20

#26

Post by dsearls »

olivermarks wrote: post #8

Doc Searles subsequently wrote a good 2012 book 'The intention Economy' https://www.amazon.com/Intention-Economy-When-Customers-Char... 'Caveat venditor—let the seller beware' 'While marketers look for more ways to get personal with customers, including new tricks with “big data,” customers are about to get personal in their own ways, with their own tools. Soon consumers will be able to: • Control the flow and use of…

Thanks!

The Internet and the Web are miracles on the order of loaves and fish, and demonstrations of how progress is the process by which the miraculous becomes mundane. This is why it's so easy to be mindful of how awful the Net and the Web have become while forgetting how miraculous both remain as well.

It's also easy to forget that the Internet as we know it is still new, dating roughly from the explosion of commercial activity that began after the NSFNet, whose "acceptable use policy" prevented commercial data from flowing through its backbone, stood down on 30 April 1995.

With tech, what can be done will be done, and that includes the bad as well as the good. Both Cluetrain and The Intention Economy directed attention to the miraculous good that was both already there (in the Cluetrain case) and on the way (in the Intention Economy case). This was not to ignore the bad, but rather to energize hackers toward working on what we need, rather than lamenting what at any moment we seem stuck with.

Today I think Cluetrain (1999) was at least thirty years ahead of its time, and The Intention Economy (2012) was around a decade ahead. Both were about what can be done with simple human agency, and about energizing hackers to work on that. If doing that was utopian, naive or simplistic, I plead guilty. I also believe the Web, the Net, email and other graces of open and widely used protocols are utopias we already have, and that should at least be encouraging.

Re: Cluetrain at 20

#27

Post by markjenkinswpg »

api wrote: post #15
Mizza wrote: post #12

There was a scene of very well-meaning academics and young people in Cambridge around the Free Software/Free Culture movement and the Berkman Center in the early/mid/late 00's. There was a lot of idealism and a belief that digital interconnectedness was going to change the world for good. At the time, it was really fun and inspiring to be a part of. I realize now that the leaders/notables of the movement were, for th…

We tend to overestimate the impact of technologies in the short term and underestimate them in the long term. The Internet visionaries overestimated how rapidly the Internet would change the status quo. Instead the status quo came and colonized the Internet. The night is young though, and we have generations coming up right now that don't know what one-way broadcast media even is. The printing press took a long time…

Will take this as an exercise to reader. What is the equivalent of leaking the battlestation construction site location and defense system and an appropriately authorized vehicle perfect for a first strike special ops force while having your starfleet and a ground legion lying in wait.

Conveniently forget about the indigenous population that hates you and can be co-opted by the special ops into the defenses take-down.

And, for talent recruitment purposes, the dear leader invites a known mind-hacker and terrorist pilot into his battlestation office with a view, sends the guards home early (because confidentiality) and offers the temptations that come with a weapon and concerns for friends and family.

Lesson: Malicious leaks in a quest for galactic domination may backfire, as may insider threats if you're not careful.

Need more Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning.

Edit addition: Lesson 2, don't double down on failed moonshoots

Re: Cluetrain at 20

#28

Post by PakG1 »

gumby wrote: post #14
slantyyz wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking more like "Oh, to be young again and be able to have the memory of a twenty-something me again. Happy days." I saw the headline, and struggled to remember any details of the book, and ended up having to read a summary of it. I only remember reading the book and talking about it with coworkers during the dot-com craze.

Perhaps that's a clue to its actual significance? Perhaps you remember the feeling and perhaps that you had fun buzzy conversations? That would mean those were the important parts, not the actual substance of the essay. Nothing wrong with that. Perhaps you changed a bit as a result, even if you can't remember precisely what spurred the change. Nothing wrong with that either. And I bet there are books you read back th…

But I have a benchmark to compare to. Any book that made a significant impact on me, I can remember some key points. Not everything, certainly not many of the details, but at least some key points.

Cluetrain Manifesto? I can't remember anything at all.

edit: Maybe it's like The World Is Flat? I've heard that people who read the book when it came out thought it was incredible, preposterous, and amazing. But if people read it for the first time today, they're like, "why is this so special?" Perhaps it's difficult to remember what Cluetrain was about because the world became Cluetrain? Except judging from all the comments, I'm guessing a lot of people were disappointed that it didn't. So I don't know.

Re: Cluetrain at 20

#29

Post by MockObject »

bitwize wrote: post #25

I think that a huge component of the "Culture War" is large media (game, movie, etc.) companies colluding with the press to mitigate the effects of internet word of mouth by discrediting independent internet-based sources that are not part of the "access journalism" payola network and that foster discussion between ordinary consumers. And the surest way to discredit an organization is to accuse it of being a safe har…

Reminds me of the programmer in his mid-20s who honestly believed that Reddit was entirely dominated by alt-right gamergate incels, because the Big Media told him so. I could not convince him otherwise.

Re: Cluetrain at 20

#30

Post by hypertexthero »

dsearls wrote: post #26
olivermarks wrote: post #8

Doc Searles subsequently wrote a good 2012 book 'The intention Economy' https://www.amazon.com/Intention-Economy-When-Customers-Char... 'Caveat venditor—let the seller beware' 'While marketers look for more ways to get personal with customers, including new tricks with “big data,” customers are about to get personal in their own ways, with their own tools. Soon consumers will be able to: • Control the flow and use of…

Thanks! The Internet and the Web are miracles on the order of loaves and fish, and demonstrations of how progress is the process by which the miraculous becomes mundane. This is why it's so easy to be mindful of how awful the Net and the Web have become while forgetting how miraculous both remain as well. It's also easy to forget that the Internet as we know it is still new, dating roughly from the explosion of comme…

The Cluetrain Manifesto was a great inspiration to me. Thank you for your work on it.

I also still like World of Ends very much: http://www.worldofends.com/

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