Faster Future: Possibilities now and beyond: david weinberger

Showing posts with label david weinberger. Show all posts

Monday, July 06, 2009

Welcome to the Futerati

I'm liking Gerd Leonhard's Futerati initiative. Inspired by the value he feels he gets from shared wisdom; he's aggregated all his favourite twitter people and their posts (which you can then sort into types such as 'thought leader', 'author', 'activist', 'startups' and 'other').

Delighted to find myself under 'other'. That's about the most apt tag I've seen for me really... a kind of 'bits of all of the above'. As Dave Weinberger put it: "Everything is Miscellaneous"

Here's Gerd explaining why he's done it - and benefiting right away from the 'we are what we share, we are found via what we share' mantra.

Yep - totally agree. Our ever broader expression of metadata brings us together with ever more people we didn't know we needed to know.

Or as Stowe Bowd puts it "I am made greater than the sum of my connections, so are my connections".

Thursday, June 11, 2009

How will they market the 10th Anniversary Cluetrain?

Ted Shelton brought together a small group for dinner in London last night (for which many thanks) including one Doc Searls.

If you've hung around this blog for any length of time you'll know I regularly reference Doc's ongoing work (particularly re the Vendor Relationship Management) and his seminal contribution to the now 10-year-old Cluetrain Manifesto.

A 10th anniversary Cluetrain is about to go on sale.
Doc told me something I didn't realise about the new edition: It will contain a new chapter each by each of the original co-authors (Chris Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger, Rick Levine) PLUS a chapter by the man who has become known as 'the fifth Beatle' of the cluetrain: JP Rangaswami.

JP works at BT in London and writes the exceptional Confused of Calcutta. His insights will be a huge addition.

So: Five new chapters. Updates learned from 10 years of post-cluetrain thinking.

A must buy.

I did warn Doc (pictured top) the world will be watching to see how this book is marketed.

One thing seemed sure from what Doc said last night - there's no online preview of the new elements before it goes on sale in print. It won't even be available on kindle at launch.

Embarrassing oversight? Or a clue to some of the new content of the book?
I'm confused by how it may fit with The Because Effect JP has referenced on many occassions (and with which I agree).

In this example that would play out as 'you don't make money with content, you make money because of it'.

The original cluetrain was (and remains) free to read online.

Perhaps the way for the launch of an updated cluetrain to generate most conversation among converts is to do exactly what we don't expect - a straightforward print-first launch?

Whatever the case the reality is the five authors have done their thinking outloud over the past decade. There may be few surprises for those on board.

But that this thinking has been distilled and decanted into one small book is likely to make it incendiary stuff for a whole new generation.

Who will you do a favour by buying a copy?

The motley crew in the lower of the iphone-rendered images with this post show (amid the blur...) l-r Ted Shelton, myself, John Willshire and Doc.

Monday, November 17, 2008

The Power of the Network's growing network...

The Power of the Network - now in it's second, 100-page extended, edition is slowly but surely forming into just the kind of social object I hoped it would become: an interesting thing people can talk about together - their conversations creating new ideas, action and value.

The new version's chapters are as follows:

1. The Death of Death
2. Don't Just Witness the Network (adapting to survive)
3. How to Go Viral
4. Communities of Purpose
5. Advertising & Marketing in the 21st Century
6. We're All Publisher's Now - The user is the destination
7. It's Not How Famous You Are - It's How Relevant
8. Digital Identity and the Long Tail
9. Why Media is the New Business Ecology
10. We Are the Eighth Mass Media
11. Hail To the Chief Node
12. How We Are Made Great

Review copies are either in the hands of or on the way to the following. If you 'd like to join the list, just drop me an email with details of your blog and your postal address.

If you've read, reviewed it, shared it or would just like to be included in the following list please let me know via comments or email. Thanks

The Power of the Network's Network (so far).

Monday, April 28, 2008

In digital space, everyone can hear you scream

When the transaction cost of group activity falls through the floor, economic behaviour must change.

That's my paraphrasing of Clay Shirky's description of the critical disruption the power of the network is causing (in his book Here Comes Everybody).

Clay has identified essentially the same learning that Dave Weinberger brings us in Everything Is Miscellaneous, or indeed that the Cluetrain Manifesto showed (in the idea that in the digital space the gap between humans is zero).

In the digital space everyone can hear you scream.

And it all comes back to Reed's Law (Group Forming Network Theory).

Value gets created by fuzzy-edged communities of purpose. The thing that allows those communities of purpose to gather, evolve, talk, cooperate and act is the medium of zeroes and ones - the digital space.

Digital IS different from the physical realm because it has the potential for us to ALL to be permanently hotdesking, globally.

Unlike the physical world it is possible for ALL the potential of Reed's Law to be fulfilled in a global digital medium.

Where that potential isn't currently fulfilled it is because we are not able to find absolutely every node on the network with whom we could, or should, connect for any given purpose.

There must be huge value in creating the optimum fitness landscape for the individuals who form groups of purpose to find one another. The more people of shared passion and purpose can find one another in real time, the more value will get created.

Until we as individuals become our own platforms, for want of a better word (ie until we as individuals are each able to connect with networks of trust without the need for mediation of any kind) there remains a place for the mediators of this process, potentially the last generation of mediator.

For media as platforms.

Monday, March 31, 2008

You can't organise a conversation

I'm finally getting round to reading David Weinberger's Everything is Miscellaneous in quiet moments here at Mobile Internet in Berlin.
Reminds me of a forum category we created on motorcyclenews.com when I was its editor: genera/general. We should have just called it miscellaneous.
You guessed it, it was by far the most used board among some 400+ forums.
Owing to the limits of our tech at the time, we had boards for each individual motorcycle model. There were other categories too, for different kinds of bikesport, biking leisure pursuits etc. Lots of centrally organised and selected pots.
But most people most of the time figured what they were about to say, or conversations they were tempted to join in with, were unclassifiable: general/general.
Conversation needs to self-organise.