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Constructive Conversation - Part II
To: Doc Searls doc@searls.com From: Doug Skoglund - skoglund@pdmsb.com Date: Thursday, June 30, 2005 03:00 am CDT Subject: Constructive Conversation - Part II My thanks for your response to my first post to your discussion web page. It was a bit disappointing, so I have been spending some additional time perusing your site along with reading Chapter One of Cluetrain Manifesto. First, you and I seem to have a different interpretation for the word, conversation. You refer to the Bush conversation and the Kerry conversation, which means absolutely nothing to me. A conversation is a two-way interchange of information between two individuals. I would see the phrase, Bush broadcast and Kerry broadcast as more apropos. And, unfortunately, even Howard Dean failed to learn from the best of what worked in his campaign. I made an attempt to contact him right after the "big rage" in Iowa, to point out that his Internet effort, while highly successful, had choked when the chips were down and that the powers in the Democratic Party along with the media had collaborated to kill his campaign. I recommended that he go independent; however, his campaign chose not to pursue any kind of conversation. BTW, Joe Trippi, wrote a pretty good book about the campaign and his feeling that the Democratic Party needed an overhaul and that the Internet was the wave of the future. He, too, chose not to pursue any kind of conversation on any subject. But, let me get to Christopher Locke's "Internet Apocalypso" -- I quote: >>Inside, outside, there's a conversation going on today that wasn't happening at all five years ago and hasn't been very much in evidence since the Industrial Revolution began. IMHO, Mr. Locke is making two fundamental mistakes. First, is the tendency to redefine the English language and second, is the belief that his generation created the thing that he calls a conversation. The fact of the matter is that there are billions of conversations going on today, just as there were billions of similar conversations going on before Mr. Locke was born. I quote again: >>"Life is too short", we say, and it is. Too short for office politics, for busywork and pointless paper chases, for jumping through hoops and covering our asses, for trying to please, to not offend, for constantly struggling to achieve some ever-receding definition of success. No, Mr. Locke, no matter what you say, no matter how you say it, somebody has said it all before. Doc, I'm not trying to denigrate Chris Locke's effort. He has done an excellent job of bringing the whole matter to the forefront, and I promise that I will get a copy of the whole book for reading and reference; however, let me add a quote from Thomas Petzinger, Jr., who said it much better than I: >>And most importantly, that however ancient, timeless, and true, these principles are just now resurging across the business world. The triggering event, of course, is the advent of a global communication system that restores the banter of the bazaar, that tears down the power structures and senseless bureaucracies, that puts everyone in touch with everyone. And finally, let me emphasize the point that you missed in my previous post. Actually, it is my desire to foster more conversation about blogs, forums and other methods of enabling conversations, with the goal of moving toward some kind of political action. When Joe Trippi says that the Democratic Party needs an overhaul, he needs to open up to some conversation on the subject, conversation leading to political action. And when Jane Harman, Democratic Representative from California says that we need to overhaul the way that Congress operates, she needs to open up to some conversation on the subject, conversation leading to political action. Doug Skoglund - http://ifihadmyway - http://pdmsb.com There are responses to this message:
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