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| Sunday, March 19, 2000 |
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Excerpt alert: The April issue of Upside is out, and it features much of David Weinberger's "Hyperlinks Subvert Hierarchy" chapter (6) of The Cluetrain Manifesto, under the title SHAKEUP AT FORT BUSINESS: Why the Web will shatter the status quo. David's chapter is a mother lode of great one-liners:
- "The urge to 'solve the problem' is nothing but the voice of the old commmand-andpcontrol psychosis trying to reassert itself. ('Premeature elucidation': the plight of men who come to answers way too soon.)"
- "Is a business more like a family than a war? Absolutely. Wars are won and then are over but companies don’t declare victory and disband the troops. No, families and businesses are open-ended commitments." (Note: this is a foreshortening of the same passage in the book.)
- "This fort is, at its heart, a place apart. We report there every morning and spend the next 8, 10, 12 hours inaccessible to the 'real world.' The portcullis drops not only to keep out our enemies, but to separate us from distractions such as our families. As the drawbridge goes up behind us, we become businesspeople, different enough from our normal selves that when we first bring our children to the office, they’ve been known to hide under our desk, crying."
- "The Web isn’t primarily a medium for information, marketing or sales. It’s a world in which people meet, talk, build, fight, love, and play. In fact, the Web world is bigger than the business world and is swallowing the business world whole. The vague rumblings you’re hearing are the sounds of digestion."
- "The change is so profound that it’s not merely a negation of the current situation. You can’t just put a big 'not' in front of Fort Business and say, 'Ah, the walls are coming down.' No, the true opposite of a fort isn’t an unwalled city. It’s a conversation."
JOHO Alert: Speaking of (and from) Dr. Weinberger, the latest JOHO is out. Among its many items is a one-question interview with Naomi Klein, author of No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (Picador) — a terrific companion to The Cluetrain Manifesto. It turns out she finds one positive spin on brands:
- Where a previous generation of activists followed the money, these kids are following the logo, with the help of the Net, wherever it leads. That means that Gap sweater-folders at the mall know all about Gap seamstresses in the maquiladoras; it means that a worker trying to unionize his McDonald's can communicate with a farmer in France protesting "McDonaldization" and with peasants in India fighting genetic engineering of foods. The brand provides the political infrastructure for Internet age activism.
Dr. Weinberger replies, "In fact, there's a case to be made that brands are the Anti-Web — one-way broadcasting that attempts to strangle conversation before it begins by implanting a simple message in the minds of the undifferentiated masses, a message that lacks even a soupçon of truth, insight or humor."
Then he adds,"But the real reason we asked Ms. Klein to comment was so that we could announce that JOHO is proud to be the first to offer the full line of Naomi!™ brand demonstration-wear, including Naomi!™ BillyBounce Headgear™, Naomi!™ camouflage jackets with convenient CopGrab DragHandles™, and Naomi!™ the cologne with just a hint of mace. All we need is a jingle and an ad agency and we're on our way!"
And speaking of (and from) Ms. Klein™, we find a pile of radical clues in "My Mafiaboy", an open letter to one of the hackers who lauched a "denial of service" attack on Yahoo, et. al. a few weeks back. A sample:
- "In our culture of instant millionaires, computer hacking has evolved into an extreme job application process: Find a weak point in a system, hack it, then offer up your high-priced security services to fix it. But when somebody comes along who isn't looking to cash in, it messes up the whole scam. Which is why the old-school hackers, their straggly ponytails freshly blow-dried, have been meeting with Bill Clinton and Janet Reno to help them nail you. These hackers claim they are motivated by love. They love technology — they just want it to work properly. But Mafiaboy, I believe you were committing an act of love too: not for the integrity of a particular line of code, but for the Internet in general, as it could have been."
A perceptive perspective. Both the piece and her book are well worth a read.
— Doc Searls
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