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The Cluetrain Manifesto (1999)

cluetrain.com

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Re: The Cluetrain Manifesto (1999)

#31

Post by ddingus »

open-source-ux wrote: post #13

The Cluetrain Manifesto is painful to read and suffers from inflated prose rather that speak plainly to the reader. Tech columnist John C Dvorak disliked The Cluetrain Manifesto and wrote a very entertaining book review in PC Magazine from 2002: Cult of the Cluetrain Manifesto : https://www.pcmag.com/archive/cult-of-the-cluetrain-manifest...

I disagreed with him at the time. Found the book to be a thought provoking and enjoyable read.

Over time, I have had success applying many of the ideas in the book. Small enterprises remain a place where the trends can be pushed back and more out of the way. Doing that makes for great customer relationships, high value communication and work being fun, even when it's responding to someone having trouble with the product and or service.

Re: The Cluetrain Manifesto (1999)

#32

Post by ddingus »

lkrubner wrote: post #21
ekanes wrote: post #11

Many comments here lament that adtech won, and that corporate speak is still the norm. All true, but many of the more “structural” premises have held, and we just don’t see them because they’re the norm now. People are much more empowered to know the truth: Amazon reviews, restaurant reviews etc. Yes they can be manipulated, and yes counterfeit products can make their way into the supply chain, but we are forgetting…

You have no evidence for any of the things that you say. The credit that you are trying to give to Glassdoor is especially artificial. Large scale economic forces, such as the crisis of 2008, have had a much larger effect than Glassdoor. You could try to make the argument "Without Glassdoor, things would be even worse" but so far you have not made that argument. As a counter-point, we should simply acknowledge that u…

"economics needs to answer."

Economics is not a science. It's not really possible to apply the scientific method. How we value things has a serious impact too.

Don't get me wrong here. The study of economics is high value and definitely can yield insight we can put to good use, but it's not on par with science in the sense of getting answers.

I would argue the answers we seek lie more along the lines of corruption and how money in politics has empowered large enterprises to shape society to a much larger degree than we can say was generally intended. Surely, carving society into a bunch of what looks like a bunch of fiefdoms impacted growth in a negative way.

Secondly, the lack of effective representation ordinary people see in politics today has not made things better. Corruption has competed very well, pushing the voice of ordinary people, the weight of their concerns, off the table, leaving us all with a poor environment to prosper in.

Re: The Cluetrain Manifesto (1999)

#33

Post by nailer »

nl wrote: post #12
bertil wrote: post #2

Friends of mine were wondering about the history after that seminal text: how we got from this (opinionated, but sensible approach) to agile coaches (they apparently never had a good experience of any; I worked with one a long time ago, the guy was like a fish on a tree at that particular company). I realized I don't know all the parts: I've met a couple of influential people in that world but there are still a lot o…

The Cluetrain Manifesto is not the same thing as The Agile Manifesto.

"A specter is haunting Europe - the specter of Cluetrain." - Karl Marx

Re: The Cluetrain Manifesto (1999)

#35

Post by AnimalMuppet »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #18

Blast from the past. My first experiences of the web were in the mid-late 1990s, and I remember this being so cool at the time. Reading it today makes me sad in so many ways. > Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived. Instagram does not strike me as "open, natural, uncontrived". Nor does any other social m…

> we lost. It's over. I don't know how we'll ever get it back.

Nope. We're here. You and me. You wrote a thoughtful comment, and now we're having a conversation about it. We, two people who have never met (so far as I know). This right here is about what we had when we said "The web was wonderful. The internet was so full of promise."

Now, true, much of the web turned into ads/corporate/shill/propaganda. And it takes dang being superhuman to keep this place from being overrun. So the larger battle may be lost.

But I think The Cluetrain Manifesto still had (and has) a fairly good point. We want the human voice on the internet, even if the corporations give us corporate-speak. (We want it even more now, with Covid having reduced the amount of in-person interaction.) We want the human touch. Corporations found that they could extract more money from us by other approaches, but we humans still want human interaction. And, I think, that's part of the charm of HN. It's mostly human talk rather than talking points or corporate-speak. (That's part of why people just repeating talking points feels so jarring here - it's out of place.)

So I think there are still pockets of what made the web so wonderful back in the day. It's not the majority any more, but there is still a fair amount of it around, if you look for it.

Re: The Cluetrain Manifesto (1999)

#36

Post by PaulRobinson »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #35
PaulRobinson wrote: post #18

Blast from the past. My first experiences of the web were in the mid-late 1990s, and I remember this being so cool at the time. Reading it today makes me sad in so many ways. > Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived. Instagram does not strike me as "open, natural, uncontrived". Nor does any other social m…

> we lost. It's over. I don't know how we'll ever get it back. Nope. We're here. You and me. You wrote a thoughtful comment, and now we're having a conversation about it. We, two people who have never met (so far as I know). This right here is about what we had when we said "The web was wonderful. The internet was so full of promise." Now, true, much of the web turned into ads/corporate/shill/propaganda. And it takes…

Thanks for this reply, and I mostly agree - I just wish that what we are talking about was the norm and not the weird niche exception.

Perhaps I need to go and think about how to support making that happen more rather than just complaining...

Re: The Cluetrain Manifesto (1999)

#37

Post by hjkl0 »

rageboy.com is still online:

http://www.rageboy.com/

I remember seeing this stuff growing up. I’ve been online for a few years at that point so I got some parts of what they were talking about, but mostly it was green to me.

I think the kind of things that came around in the early 00s after the bubble were very much in this spirit.

Re: The Cluetrain Manifesto (1999)

#38

Post by docsearls »

mikewarot wrote: post #3

Doc Searls fought a good fight against adtech, but he lost. 8( He's still speaking out against the idiocy of the world. He also takes good photos.

It's a long fight, of the kind one loses until one wins.

We've been at Gandhicon 1, 2, and 3 for decades now. But we'll get to 4.

There are simply better ways for demand and supply to signal each other than what adtech provides. When we prove that, we'll win.

Re: The Cluetrain Manifesto (1999)

#39

Post by docsearls »

mkovach wrote: post #9

Doc Searls and The Cluetrain Manifesto. Man, I have thought about both in quite a while. I guess I'll have to find my dusty copy hidden in some forgotten corner.

Try the 10th anniversary edition. Has more chapters, and some slightly more evolved views.

And while you're at it, try The Intention Economy as well. :-)

Re: The Cluetrain Manifesto (1999)

#40

Post by docsearls »

ddingus wrote: post #31
open-source-ux wrote: post #13

The Cluetrain Manifesto is painful to read and suffers from inflated prose rather that speak plainly to the reader. Tech columnist John C Dvorak disliked The Cluetrain Manifesto and wrote a very entertaining book review in PC Magazine from 2002: Cult of the Cluetrain Manifesto : https://www.pcmag.com/archive/cult-of-the-cluetrain-manifest...

I disagreed with him at the time. Found the book to be a thought provoking and enjoyable read. Over time, I have had success applying many of the ideas in the book. Small enterprises remain a place where the trends can be pushed back and more out of the way. Doing that makes for great customer relationships, high value communication and work being fun, even when it's responding to someone having trouble with the prod…

Thanks!

The least quoted and most important "clue" in The Cluetrain Manifesto is the "one clue" listed above the "95 theses." Written by the very sadly late Chris Locke, it says,"we are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers. we are human beings and our reach exceeds your grasp. deal with it."

Sadly, that has not yet been proven true. Their grasp far exceeds our reach. But that doesn't mean it always will. Our Digital Age is three decades old at most and will last dozens or thousands of decades more. So it's early.

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