The Times: Tech column - Cluetrain Manifesto/Video e-mails
By David Rowan
ALMOST four years ago, Chris Locke, Doc Searls, Rick Levine and David Weinberger set out their vision of how the internet was going to transform the business world. Their Cluetrain Manifesto consisted of 95 thoughts addressed to "people of Earth" who needed to realise that, thanks to the web, markets were becoming "better informed, smarter, and more demanding of qualities missing from most business organisations".
It was a timely vision, defining for the non-geek world how the networked marketplace would empower customers to demand new levels of service, using message-boards, chatrooms and e-mail conversations to undermine the traditional ways in which corporate marketing departments had controlled the information flow.
"You're too busy 'doing business' to answer our e-mail?" began Point 77 in typical style. "Oh gosh, sorry, gee, we'll come back later. Maybe."
In the frenetic gold-rush days of 1999, Cluetrain quickly became a sacred text - even if its visionary language probably contributed to several of the battier dot-com business plans. Now, though, Searls and Weinberger are back with a follow-up manifesto for the web, which they are calling the World of Ends (www.worldofends.com).
It is just ten points long and begins, as it has to, with an acknowledgment that mistakes have been made. "For example: thinking that selling toys for pets on the web is a great way to get rich. We're not going to do that again." It goes on to explain more instances of "repetitive mistake syndrome", but as a clear, simple examination of what the internet actually is, it is a useful antidote to hype and potentially a way to save the venture capitalists their next few billion pounds.
The net is not rocket science, according to their thinking: it is merely a world with you at one end, and everybody and everything else at the other. As such, the net is not a "thing" but an agreement to work together using a certain protocol. As long as you agree to this protocol, you can do what you want around its edges - from swapping songs to sending video e-mails. Because no one owns it, everyone can use it, and anyone can improve it. That's it: just a means of moving bits around, for whatever purposes you choose.
This might not suit mega corporations and governments which, until now, have acted as if the internet were theirs, to saturate with pop-up adverts or censor for commercial or political reasons. But it does help to explain why the most useful innovations in recent online history have been about communities communicating with each other, rather than businesses making a quick buck. Why didn't we think of that in 1999?
++++
I AM writing this from Los Angeles, where it has been an expensive week, tech-wise. First, I made the mistake of travelling without a laptop, assuming that I would find a plentiful supply of internet cafes from which to contact the office. Wrong. This place is so advanced that every other coffee-shop and hotel seems to be kitted out for wireless networking, so that, for about £5 a day, you can stay online wherever you take your laptop. If, of course, you have brought one. The alternative has been the Omni Interactive kiosks that are spreading around hotel lobbies and shopping malls. You have to stand up and pay £8 an hour to type on a clunky keyboard as advertisements flash all around you.
But you do at least get to record "video e-mails" using the inbuilt camera and microphone. At $2 (£1.25) for 20 seconds, it is not the best crack at fame that Tinseltown offers, but I'm hoping it keeps the folk at T2 amused.
(The Times, March 11 2003)
ALMOST four years ago, Chris Locke, Doc Searls, Rick Levine and David Weinberger set out their vision of how the internet was going to transform the business world. Their Cluetrain Manifesto consisted of 95 thoughts addressed to "people of Earth" who needed to realise that, thanks to the web, markets were becoming "better informed, smarter, and more demanding of qualities missing from most business organisations".
It was a timely vision, defining for the non-geek world how the networked marketplace would empower customers to demand new levels of service, using message-boards, chatrooms and e-mail conversations to undermine the traditional ways in which corporate marketing departments had controlled the information flow.
"You're too busy 'doing business' to answer our e-mail?" began Point 77 in typical style. "Oh gosh, sorry, gee, we'll come back later. Maybe."
In the frenetic gold-rush days of 1999, Cluetrain quickly became a sacred text - even if its visionary language probably contributed to several of the battier dot-com business plans. Now, though, Searls and Weinberger are back with a follow-up manifesto for the web, which they are calling the World of Ends (www.worldofends.com).
It is just ten points long and begins, as it has to, with an acknowledgment that mistakes have been made. "For example: thinking that selling toys for pets on the web is a great way to get rich. We're not going to do that again." It goes on to explain more instances of "repetitive mistake syndrome", but as a clear, simple examination of what the internet actually is, it is a useful antidote to hype and potentially a way to save the venture capitalists their next few billion pounds.
The net is not rocket science, according to their thinking: it is merely a world with you at one end, and everybody and everything else at the other. As such, the net is not a "thing" but an agreement to work together using a certain protocol. As long as you agree to this protocol, you can do what you want around its edges - from swapping songs to sending video e-mails. Because no one owns it, everyone can use it, and anyone can improve it. That's it: just a means of moving bits around, for whatever purposes you choose.
This might not suit mega corporations and governments which, until now, have acted as if the internet were theirs, to saturate with pop-up adverts or censor for commercial or political reasons. But it does help to explain why the most useful innovations in recent online history have been about communities communicating with each other, rather than businesses making a quick buck. Why didn't we think of that in 1999?
++++
I AM writing this from Los Angeles, where it has been an expensive week, tech-wise. First, I made the mistake of travelling without a laptop, assuming that I would find a plentiful supply of internet cafes from which to contact the office. Wrong. This place is so advanced that every other coffee-shop and hotel seems to be kitted out for wireless networking, so that, for about £5 a day, you can stay online wherever you take your laptop. If, of course, you have brought one. The alternative has been the Omni Interactive kiosks that are spreading around hotel lobbies and shopping malls. You have to stand up and pay £8 an hour to type on a clunky keyboard as advertisements flash all around you.
But you do at least get to record "video e-mails" using the inbuilt camera and microphone. At $2 (£1.25) for 20 seconds, it is not the best crack at fame that Tinseltown offers, but I'm hoping it keeps the folk at T2 amused.
(The Times, March 11 2003)
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