Wednesday, February 1, 2006
On making and changing minds
Competing Messages: Getting Your Cluetrain Ticket Punched is another thoughtful and challenging post by Dave Rogers. It's a long one, so please read the whole thing there. I'll answer his specific challenges here. And maybe not all in one post, because Real Life is also going on, and blogging takes a back seat to that. Here goes.
I'd challenge Doc to point to an example of how blogging has changed his mind.
In this post on 9/11/2001, I declared myself a pacifist. I'm not sure I am anymore. Not a determined one. I might meet the definition suggested by the first two paragraphs of the Wikipedia entry on pacifism. But as for being a pacifist of the nonviolence school to which I used to belong... well, I have doubts now. It's not a subject I'm eager to write about, but there it is.
Anyway, it was mostly reading blogs that moved me. Eric Raymond, Andrew Sullivan, Matt Welch, Mike Sanders, Jeff Jarvis and David Weinberger come to mind. But, frankly, its not something I'm inclined to blog about.
I was gaga for awhile about Juan Cole until Mike Sanders smacked me down about that, as I recall. But that may have been in a private conversation. Does it matter?
Here I tell how Craig Burton busted me for "Droppin' Bloggin' Packets" when I was trying to transcribe a live event. I've hardly done that since.
Here's where Jay Rosen changed my mind about Bill O'Reilly vs. Terry Gross.
When I think of people who have changed my mind, Shelley Powers, Chris Nolan and Sheila Lennon all come to mind. Chris pushed back on a lot of what I said in Saving the Net. I agree with a lot of what she said. That agreement is informing another piece I'm writing right now.
Okay, I'll move on to the rest of the list tomorrow.
Making me into a mash potato
Jeremie just introduced me to diggdot.us. Nice.
reeferss.com looks cool too, though I'm not sure how to stick its script in this blog. Or if I should.
Constitutional reminder
Don Marti has a great idea for the t-shirt Gov. Kaine should have worn last night.
More capital, less ism
Why, though, should we think big when the essence of new Web businesses is smallness? Add an API and charge for data, mash-up a bunch of services to create a new view of the world, or latch an ad model to a formerly fee-based product—that's a solid foundation to start something these days. And we aren't talking about the most capital-intensive undertakings...
That's one small pull-quote from a much longer piece about what Mitch calls the Friends-and-Family era of IT business, where companies are launched like small businesses in the old-fashioned economy.
He opens with, Dave Winer has done a lot of smart technology development, but I'd look somewhere else for ideas about how to fix venture capital (a reference to what Dave said here). But Dave's deeper point is about making users owners. I think that's key, and also not far from Mitch's "the essence of new Web businesses is smallness".
I believe there are lots of approaches that need to be discussed and tried. But I also believe we're beginning to see a fundamental shift in the marketplace itself. As more developers and users participate with each other, user-based funding of some kind becomes inevitable.
What form(s) should that take? I think that's the big question we're all trying to answer here.
Bonus link: On Being an Angel, by Christopher Allen.
A date to go with the place
OneWebDay is up. It's a day — like, say, Earth Day — to celebrate the Web as a Real Place (and not just an "information service" delivered by packet carriers), and the lives we live there.
The date: September 22, every year, starting in 2006.
I love the whole idea. It's critically important that we recognize, and celebrate, the Web, and the Net, as a place, and not just as a shipping system for "content". I explain why in Saving the Net. The nub:
We who know and understand the territorial nature of the Net need to appeal to the same territorial sense in those we hope to win over with our arguments.
Advocating and saving the Net is not a partisan issue. Lawmakers and regulators aren't screwing up the Net because they're "Friends of Bush" or "Friends of Hollywood" or liberals or conservatives. They're doing it because one way of framing the Net--as a transport system for content--is winning over another way of framing the Net--as a place where markets and business and culture and governance can all thrive.
Celebrating OneWebDay is a great way to do that.
Huge kudos to Susan Crawford for coming up with the idea and for getting the ball rolling. You can help too. Here's the Project Wiki.
Take the time
Essay: The Chronological Web.
Pity our perfect weather
Last night's sunset was sky candy.
These mornings I've been getting my public radio over the Net from KUOW in Seattle, where the weather forecasts are a dirge of cold and rain. (Our main regional public station, KCRW out of Santa Monica, is having an annoying fundraising marathon, which I hate. I give them money, but not during fund drives. It only encourages them.)
It's amazing how little Winter we've had this year. Meaning how little rain: almost none. All of it has hit North of here. The forecast is for a high of at least 70 degrees (21 Celsius) all week. With no rain.
While that makes us enviable in February, it also makes us flammable by April. The woods are dry, and so are the reservoirs.
Worse, there's no snow at Mt. Baldy, so: no skiing. (Or so little it doesn't count.)
Meanwhile, we're out on bikes and rollerblades, dining outside at the beach, living in a SoCal brochure.
What hell.
[Later...] Ben Barren says,
I didnt even think it was real, or it was one of those maldives honeymoon hotel photos. Now Doc, if you could just photoshop Jessica Alba in?