Don't know what it was that struck me about this one. Something. Web as shared scrapbook. But it's more than that. All the pictures you could ever want are out there somewhere. It's the glue that holds them together that's often missing. I'm the same age as Doc. Not sure where I was living in 1955. DC, I think. Just before we moved to California. Mountain View, Sunnyvale. I had a dog out there named Lightning. I watched Vertigo a few nights ago and remembered that the 1955 Pontiac was my favorite car back then. I could tell you make and model of everything on the road in those days at 200 yards. My eyesight was better. And there were a lot fewer cars.

"I just found this picture of Kim, in a wheelbarrow with myself and my sister Jan. I'm holding him by his collar from behind. This was in 1955, when I was eight." Doc Searls

Here's another shot of Doc (center) a few years later at the Digital ID 2002 conference in Denver, flanked by David Weinberger on the left and myself on the right. I tend to hate this picture of myself, but it's the best I've ever seen of David, capturing that just-beneath-the-surface snarky almost twinkle -- either that, or he really is a psycho killer, as I've long suspected. Also notice that he's the only one seems to be aware we're being photographed. David has just landed a contract from Times Books for his next publishing project, Everything is Miscellaneous.

Starting in the Fall of 1998, Doc, David and I began a lengthy online conversation that eventually morphed into The Cluetrain Manifesto. And the rest is history, as they say -- especially the advance we got for the book. The New York Times reviewed it ("the general thrust is on the mark" the reviewer wrote, the kindest by far of the things he had to say), and ran a good chunk of the first chapter. Here's a sub-chunk...

WE DIE.

You will never hear those words spoken in a television ad. Yet this central fact of human existence colors our world and how we perceive ourselves within it. "Life is too short," we say, and it is. Too short for office politics, for busywork and pointless paper chases, for jumping through hoops and covering our asses, for trying to please, to not offend, for constantly struggling to achieve some ever-receding definition of success. Too short as well for worrying whether we bought the right suit, the right breakfast cereal, the right laptop computer, the right brand of underarm deodorant.

Life is too short because we die. Alone with ourselves, we sometimes stop to wonder what's important, really. Our kids, our friends, our lovers, our losses? Things change and change is often painful. People get "downsized," move away, the old neighborhood isn't what it used to be. Children get sick, get better, get bored, get on our nerves. They grow up hearing news of a world more frightening than anything in ancient fairy tales. The wicked witch won't really push you into the oven, honey, but watch out for AK-47s at recess.

Amazingly, we learn to live with it. Human beings are incredibly resilient. We know it's all temporary, that we can't freeze the good times or hold back the bad. We roll with the punches, regroup, rebuild, pick up the pieces, take another shot. We come to understand that life is just like that. And this seemingly simple understanding is the seed of a profound wisdom.

It is also the source of a deep hunger that pervades modern life -- a longing for something entirely different from the reality reinforced by everyday experience. We long for more connection between what we do for a living and what we genuinely care about, for work that's more than clock-watching drudgery. We long for release from anonymity, to be seen as who we feel ourselves to be rather than as the sum of abstract metrics and parameters. We long to be part of a world that makes sense rather than accept the accidental alienation imposed by market forces too large to grasp, to even contemplate.

And this longing is not mere wistful nostalgia, not just some unreconstructed adolescent dream. It is living evidence of heart, of what makes us most human.

MIT's Technology Review was less than impressed with the book, though the review itself was less scathing than its title would suggest...

from: Manifestly Clueless by Wade Roush
source: Technology Review, 1 March 2000
via: HighBeam™ Research

Bold and irreverent to the point of being smart-alecky, the Manifesto makes a fun, thought-provoking read. It helped me to recognize that, in my day job as the editor of an industry Web site, my role is not just to serve up prepared content but also to fuel conversation with and between readers. I also felt compelled to examine my own writing style for corporatespeak and ivory-towerism. Thousands of other Netizens have become signatories, and the manifesto's authors -- a quartet of journalists and marketing consultants-have become gurus of the Web economy.

The four deserve kudos for highlighting how the Internet is changing the balance of knowledge and power in the marketplace, and how intranets are doing the same within the workplace. Their effort to save corporations from their own fear of these facts is also valiant. The truth is, though, that the Manifesto's 95 theses boil down to a handful of ideas; the rest is attitude. And while this gonzo voice produces a frisson in limited doses, it becomes suffocatingly smug at book length. Isn't this what the Manifesto warns companies against?

My advice: Skip the book. Go look at the Cluetrain Web site (www.cluetrain.com), read the theses twice, then come back in a week or two and read them again. Then, to keep yourself from taking it all too seriously, go see the wickedly funny parody site, www.gluetrain.com. Thesis No. 17: "If you use lots of really big words like 'metaphysical,' you can stretch four or five ideas into 95 theses."

Remarkably, the Gluetrain parody is still up. We all thought it was quite wonderful at the time, and said so -- which seemed to deeply perplex its authors, who bitterly complained that they were trying to piss us off and why were we being so nice? Anyway, still worth a look. Theses #37 and #42 ain't bad. And #48: "When corporate intranets are not constrained by fear and legalistic rules, the type of conversation they encourage sounds remarkably like the squealing of pigs at a hog market." Ah yes, those were the days, my friend!