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inactiveTopic Saturday, February 11, 2006
started 2/11/2006; 10:30:44 AM - last post 2/11/2006; 10:30:44 AM
Doc Searls - Saturday, February 11, 2006  blueArrow
2/11/2006; 2:30:44 PM (reads: 11213, responses: 0)
Wish listed 
 Jeneane Sessum:
 The major analyst firms either need to offer a price/platform for indies and new media folks, OR new media folks need to start indie analyst gropus of their own, offering their findings at a price that's at least sort of affordable, which is not $3K for a report.
 Or even better, a wikipedia version of research and analysis compilations.
 Is something out there we (Jeneane, moi, her commenters so far) don't know?
 
Lose endings 
 Eric Raymond: Un-ending the Internet. Follow down through the comments. Interesting thread.
 
Offense post 
 In New Gatekeepers Are Still *GATEKEEPERS*, Seth Finkelstein calls my post yesterday on the matter of gatekeeping wrong and worse:
 ...to be told that a page sitting out on the end of the Long Tail is somehow equal to that sort of megaphone, because everybody could *in theory* read it. They won't, and to say otherwise starts to become downright cruel.
 Maybe he's right. I don't know.
 I feel I'm in some kind of bind here.
 I have this idea that the blogosphere is the one place in the world — or perhaps an entirely new world, or a part of a new world, created on the Net — where there is no need for class, for caste, for gates or keepers of anything.
 To me this is a world where the only success that fully counts is in helping move good ideas along, in helping make this new world a bigger, better and more open place. And in helping others enjoy the privilege of participating in it.
 I see this world as a place built on credits given, taken and passed along. I see this world as a place where it is at least possible to overcome disagreements, and to come to new agreements that would not be possible without the protocol, both technical and civil, we call the hyperlink.
 I've always thought the most important thesis in Cluetrain was not the first, but the seventh: Hyperlinks subvert hierarchies.
 What I've tried to say, in my posts responding to Tristan's, Scott's and others making the same point, is nothing more than what David Weinberger said in those three words.
 I thought I was giving subversion advice in the post that so offended Seth. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe being widely perceived as a high brick in the blogosphere's pyramid gives my words an unavoidable hauteur — even if I'm busy insisting that all the 'sphere's pyramids are just dunes moving across wide open spaces.
 I don't know.
 I do know what it is like to be on the outside, to face gates far more closed than those anybody faces in the blogosphere.
 In the caste systems of my childhood and youth -- athletics, academics, success with girls -- I was on the Z list. In sports I was nearly always the last one chosen when teams were picked. To girls I was a bad dancer with buck teeth (one of them broken until I was seventeen). In school my grades and test scores were worse than embarrassing. I was well into my thirties before I kept a job or began to enjoy success in business.
 Nearly all of what I'm known for I've done since I was fifty. And without the Net, there would hardly be any of it. For me this fact is chock full of lessons and a sense of duty about passing them along, even if I'm still learning most of them.
 So I write a lot about the Net, the Web, blogging, podcasting and the rest of it. And maybe I'm wrong about a lot of it too. Hell, what does anybody know? The whole thing is still new. Everything we say about it is unavoidably provisional.
 What bothers me most, I guess, is the matter of manners. I have no problem annoying gasbag CEOs, but it pains me to think I'm being cruel without knowing it to a blogger who's trying just as hard as I am — or maybe harder — to make sense of things.
 So, if that's what I did with that post, my apologies to Tristan, Scott, Seth and anybody else who took offense.
 I'll just add that, if ya'll want to subvert some hierarchies, including the one you see me in now, I'd like to help.
 Bonus links: Dave Winer, Mitch Ratcliffe, Kent Newsome.
 
Shoot 
 A butte in Utah, probably
 Here's a photoset of shots I took Monday on a flight from Santa Barbara to Denver.
 I was looking forward to getting some nice shots on the way from Boston to Los Angeles this morning. But when United upgraded me to business class (a perk of travelling too much), they gave me a window seat on the sunny side of the plane, where it's hard to get good shots. I tried to decline the upgrade, so I could keep my window seat on the shady side in coach, but they'd already given it away. Ah well. Maybe I can swap with somebody.
 [Later...] Soon as I got on the plane, a flight attendant said "Are you Mr. Searls? Your seat has been changed. You now have an aisle seat." Nobody was interested in swapping, but I did have a nice conversation with the guy next to me in the window seat. He's from Russia and has lived in Boston for many years. Involved in a lot of businesses. Not much to show for it, but not a bad trade.
 
Rhymes with Low 
 I'm at Logan Airport, where all the wi-fi is for-fee, and MassPort is the provider. I couldn't get on through Boingo, MassPort's "partner", even though I can get on through Boingo at LAX. So I paid the $7.95. For that I get the partial inability to do everything, for no apparent reason other than the system's throwing up a "launching the Nomadix console" page, randomly, and stopping other services (making blog posts, using email) for (I assume) the same reason. Very annoying.
 Anyway, headed home shortly. Getting out of Boston right before the snowstorm hits. Twelve inches are expected.
 
Might help sales 
 oso: If I were dictator of my own small island, it¹s not capitalism that I would get rid of, it¹s marketing.
 
Not funny 
 Brian Benz: it bugs me to refer to my fellow earthlings as "them".
 Brian is in agreement with Dave on the matter. Me too. Also Andrew Sullivan.

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