Slashdot Mirror
World of Ends Public Draft
Doc Searls sent me the link over to the newest work that he and fellow Cluetrain person David Weinberger haveput together. It's called "World of Ends" although I like the subtitle "What the Internet Is and
How to Stop Mistaking It
for Something Else" better - but that's just me. In any case, some interesting reading, particular if you like/d The Cluetrain Manifesto. Update: 03/08 14:42 GMT by CN : Yeah, this is a dupe of yesterday's story. Everyone point at Hemos and laugh.
Perhaps if there was a simple "dupe" button on articles in The Mysterious Future, these would get picked up quicker. When a subscriber sees a story in The Mysterious Future at the moment they have no immediate way to offer feedback on it besides emailing the editors. No-one's going to bother doing this.
That way if an article gets a dozen "dupe" marks against it while it's still in the queue, it can get held until it's checked by an editor and then pulled if necessary.
Makes me wish I had seen it yesterday :)
...the Web, like television, is a way to hold eyeballs still while advertisers spray them with messages.
...the Net is something that telcos and cable companies should filter, control and otherwise "improve."
... it's a bad thing for users to communicate between different kinds of instant messaging systems on the Net.
...the Net suffers from a lack of regulation to protect industries that feel threatened by it.
A couple points about the mistakes being made over and over and over ad nauseum:
Other mistakes we insist on making over and over. For example, thinking that:
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This one in particular struck me. As has already been proven, users will find ways to block annoying advertising (Guidescope, AdSubtract, Junkbuster, etc.) rendering it useless. Free tip to the ad agencies: an ad that one finds interesting and compels us to explore further is not the same as oner that is obnoxious and gets our attention for the wrong reasons. An ad that is unseen will draw exactly -0- potential customers.
As for those who believe that users who block ads steal content: there is nothing that requires me to read the ads in my local newspaper. If I don't read those ads, am I stealing content there as well? If I pull out the remote control and change the TV channel at a commercial or get up to get a sandwich when the ads come on, am I stealing content? (Yes, I know what the "content providers" say about that, and I say "screw you" to them.)
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The Internet is a pipe. It is a pipe that transmits data hither and yon. That is it. The only improvements that the telcos and cable providers can do is add better and faster hardware to make the pipe bigger. Using the "Information Superhighway" as the analogy: when you have a freeway through your city and you improve it, you improve the efficiency of the flow of traffic by making it EASIER for traffic to pass through, not HARDER.
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If AOL, Microsoft, et al won't do it, I bet some intrepid programming brains will write "switchboard" type server software that will do it for them, assuming it hasn't been done already. The IM clients and services are free, so how can AOL be afraid of losing customers of their AIM users can talk directly to MSN Messenger users? Must be that whole territory, ego, alpha-male thing.
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The threat facing those industries (music and multimedia content) that feel threatened by it is their own failure to embrace the INternet for what it is: a means for these companies to distribute their product practically instantly and at a extremely reduced cost. If I buy ten or twelve tracks from Liquid Audio and burn my own CD, that cost me about $12 or $14 all told. That CD is worth much more than the $16 CD that the local Camelot Music is trying to push with only two or three good tracks.
The non-threatened industries take advantage of the Internet pipe and use it for what it is: a fast and easy means of transmitting data. Cisco apparently saw this when they developed the voice-over-IP phones (which, BTW, are very cool--I had the opportunity to use them over a multi-site network linked by satellite, and they sounded just like a land line) and the telecos are threatened because now users can communicate without using their proprietary, charge-by-the-minute phone systems.
My thoughts for the morning...
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?