Here's the reply I sent to Micah Sifry last night in response to his letter responding to my post about his article. Confused yet? If you just got here, you may need to read backwards a bit to grasp what's going on here. On the other hand, I often find mental confusion quite refreshing after a long day of hyper-rationality. If you're at all like me in this respect, just jump in wherever. btw, the title slug should be taken as no slur on my bosom buddy (he'll laugh) Doc Searls, who originally came up with the cluetrain thesis "markets are conversations." This has always bothered me because of the (perhaps unconscious) tendency some folks may have to reverse it and think: conversations are markets. This is ever so wrong, as some of us have discovered through brutal experience. "OK then, dammit, if you stay, I'll put out the trash." Somehow, such bargaining never quite reaches to the heart of the matter. I'm not sure if these reflections are entirely apposite here, but I've been thinking about this whole cluetrain conversation thing for about five years now, and I thought it was maybe time to say something.

But forget all that. Here's the letter I sent Micah -- verbatim except for a few (I can never resist) hyperlinks and graphical embellishments.

Dear Micah,

What a cordial note after my taking you so dreadfully to task. Thank you. You know, I figured it was a copy editor looking out the window at some passing lass. Or laddie. But I leaned on the point because Cluetrain was always careful not to lend itself to political issues, or religious, or pick-yer-ellipsis. And believe me, we were asked by every stripe of ideology and idolatry for endorsement of each's particular pet thing. We all felt that such alliances would weaken our core argument. Which, as some Amazon reviewers helpfully pointed out, we repeated about 6,000 times. So much time has passed since then, I forget now precisely what it was.

Anyway: Ich bin unpolitisch. Sort of. If pressed, I guess I'd say I'm more for casting Molotov cocktails than votes -- but only because it's a halfway decent line and I take my poetic license seriously. (Perhaps because getting my learner's permit was such a bitch.)

I feel worst about my slur on your use of "paradigm shift." A low blow, I admit. However, where I come from, that's an actionable offense. And I don't mean "actionable" the way CEOs say that. "We need an actionable business plan." Looks like ever since Enron, they've been getting their wish.

But dude, even T.S. Kuhn stopped saying "paradigm shift" -- and he invented the phrase. Sorry, but you owe me 50 bucks. Lucky for you it's a first infraction. Far as I know...

More seriously, I think it worth pushing back on the Negropontean notion that being "wired" makes us some sort of privileged elite. Well... actually, it makes too many of us suspect we are just that; and that's the problem. Having cable or DSL or whatever fat bandwidth and however killer Javascript skilz, makes us no different from 10,000 pornographers and Google only knows how many Aryan Nation sites. I know I'll be reviled for saying this, yea verily, but I dunno... I think I'd rather take my chances with a barroom full of Aryan Brothers than with a standards-committee style of governance enforced by The Dotters of the American Slash. (I'm keeping this in secret code to cut down on the flame mail.)

So now we are all  online, or soon will be, and the only solution I can see is the unthinkable. We are going to have to talk, not just among ourselves, but to each other. Politics, if I may offer an observation, and if the past lends any clue, is the art of doing everything but that.

Worse (in an ongoing series of unfortunate realities), before we can talk, we're going to need something to say. And somehow, affirming our hardcore digitalness doesn't strike me as the optimal opener. "Hello," on the other hand, might be a good start.

I make these remarks, which I hope you will post along with your friendly letter, in an equally friendly spirit of universal surrealism. That is to say: this --> | <-- is not a pipe.

very best

chris

cc: David Weinberger, Doc Searls and Rick Levine, my erstwhile partners in crime, any or all of whom are welcome (but of course) to refute anything Royal-We-ish I may have said above with respect to the cluetrain manifesto in any of its manifestotions[sic]. [semper tyranis, RB.]