On the Bus, But with Occasional Stops

Saltire blogs today about David Dwyer of New Riders, “Publishing Voices that Matter.” Saltire praises Dwyer’s passion and points to a quote from Dwyer that suggests a really useful criterion: “I care about your opinions as long as they’ve been formed by reliable sources outside of our building.” St. Ken Kesey’s idea that you’re either on the bus or off the bus has a certain commit-or-be-damned feel going for it, but too much time on the bus can wear away at your evidentiary base (as Kesey certainly wouldn’t have put it). And, although Saltire is nice enough to point out that the one book that Dwyer recommended in his presentation to Saltire’s students was The Cluetrain Manifesto, the same has to be true of spending too much time on the Cluetrain. Yeah, markets are definitely conversations, and so is the Web and so is much of business. But they’re also not conversations, just on the general principle that nothing is only one thing. Mysticism? Nah, the enabling ambiguity of language.

(By the way, the full text of the book, The Cluetrain Manifesto, is online here.)

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