Cluetrainic Democracy
The Happy Tutor has posted a remix of the Cluetrain Manifesto, applying it to democracy in corporate America. Democracy is a conversation and — just as important — corporations aren’t citizens. (And if they were, we’d hate them.)
The Tutor’s rendition tends towards the hyperbolic — unlike the staid and measured tones of the original. He doesn’t think corporations are capable of reform, and thus he replaces the chiding tone of the original with a call for heads on pikes. And the truth is that the four authors of the original varied on whether “the end of business as usual” (the book’s subtitle) meant reform or revolution. (I personally didn’t think, and still don’t think, that we’re going to see the collapse of the large corporation as a form of business life, but I’ve never been right about anything.) Ultimately, I think the theses ended up calling for corporate change and not corporate dismemberment mainly for rhetorical reasons, although I’m not sure I’m speaking for my co-authors on this: the manifesto tried to express some thoughts latent in the Web body politic about what was going on, and you don’t get to explain yourself to someone if you’re also screaming “Die, you bastard!” at him.
Anyway, take a look at what the Tutor hath wrought.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
I want to apologize for my Master, the Happy Tutor, who often goes off “half-cocked,” though much the same has been said of me. To present his point in a balanced Horation way, as an educated person, who does not want to be insensitive, let me say that there are three sectors: business, governmental, and nonprofit. Cluetrain address only business, and does so in language hoised from politics and utopian poetry or religion. Why? Is Cluetrain a liberatrian work that denies the importance of other sectors, that puts them intentionally “under erasure,” or is Cluetrain pre-political, or is it essentially a marekting piece written for those with marekting dollars, as a “door-opener.” Tutor does so chide me for being literal, which he says is the mark of little minds, but do the Cluetrain authors think there is anything “outside the market”? If so why do they only discuss us as consumers and producers, not as citizens, or children of God? Is this an oversight, a kind of blindeness, or is it on purpose?
Cluetrain was about why businesses have their heads up their asses about the Web. There are other things to write about. Writing about one thing doesn’t deny the importance of writing about others. Or do you insist that there is only one thing to write about, which happens to be what you and your master write about?
If you recall, when the cluetrain site went up, almost all the media jabber was about the Internet as a business opportunity. Cluetrain’s focus on business was a reaction to that misperception.
You ask: Do the cluetrain authors think there’s anything ‘outside the market’? I reply for myself: Reading what I write about would answer that question quickly. And then there’s the stuff that I care about that I don’t write about. But we wouldn’t want to let that get in the way of you exercising your mighty judgment.
Jeez.