…words

It has been about 10 years since the Cluetrain Manifesto was published, and it remains as relevant as ever. In fact, it was my own original inspiration to start blogging in 2006.

This is a quote from the Introduction to this amazing book:

“Because the Internet is so technically efficient, it has also been adopted by companies seeking to become more productive. They too are hungry for knowledge, for the intellectual capital that has become more valuable than bricks and mortar or any tangible asset. What they didn’t count on were the other effects of web technology. Hypertext is inherently non-hierarchical and anti-bureaucratic. It does not reinforce loyalty and obedience; encourages idle speculation and loose talk. It encourages stories.

These new conversations online – whether on the wild and woolly Internet or on (slightly) more sedate corporate intranets – are generating new ways of looking at problems. They are spawning new perspectives, new tools, and a new kind of intellectual bravery more comfortable with risk than with regulation. The result is not just new things learned but a vastly enhanced ability to learn things. And the pace of this learning is accelerating. In the networked marketplace it is reflected in the joy of play. On company intranets it is reflected in the joy of knowledge. But it’s getting difficult to tell the two apart. Employees go home and get online. They bring new attitudes back to work the next day. Enthusiastic surfers get hired and bring strange new views into corporations that, until now, have successfully protected themselves from everything else. The World Wide Web reinforces freedom. The Internet routes around obstacles. The confluence of these conversations is not only inevitable, it has largely already occurred”.¹

The Cluetrain Manifesto is one of the concepts that inspired me to start this project this past spring. I was already interested in blogs, mainly as a source for news that I wasn’t able to get from the TV and Cable networks. In the process I discovered that there were blogs and websites for every conceivable interest. I used it as a resource for my own hobbies, information on authors and books that I like to read, research for my work, and so on.
Eventually I began to get ideas about starting a web-based business in order to break free of the shackles of the 9 to 5 world: ties, Suits, and Corporate Dictatorships.

I am much closer to that goal now, having learned many important lessons on the way. After I found The Cluetrain Manifesto, I understood some of what to expect from this new medium, and why the future of business is Internet-based business (and soon there will not be any business without an Internet component). The heart of the internet component is in two-way communication, a conversation: provider to customer, customer to provider.

Business is just a word for buying and selling things. In one way or another, we all rely on this commerce, both to get the things we want or need, and to afford them. We are alternately the workers who create products and services, and the customers who purchase them. There is nothing inherently wrong with this setup. Except when it becomes all of life. Except when life becomes secondary and subordinate. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, business so dominates all other aspects of our existence that it’s hard to imagine it was ever otherwise.²

The original marketplace was a “commerce-zone” set as the central part, the essential heart of every village, town, and city. The larger the population, the greater the variety of goods available. Yet there was always one common “product” in every market, sought out by everyone, everywhere in the world.

Conversation. News. Gossip. Stories. Human interaction. Call it what you will. This marketplace is where information was exchanged.

Information – frequently more valuable than any commodity or trade good.

Commerce is a natural part of human life, but it has become increasingly unnatural over the intervening centuries, incrementally divorcing itself from the people on whom it most depends, whether workers or customers. While this change is in many ways understandable – huge factories took the place of village shops; the marketplace moved from the center of the town and came to depend on far-flung mercantile trade – the result has been to interpose a vast chasm between buyers and sellers.³

Conversations cannot exist across this chasm. Buyers and sellers, companies and customers want to communicate, they need to communicate. That is why I am here. In the following posts we will explore these conversations and how they will affect the future of business.

The ultimate purpose of this web suite is to join/create a new community, where small businesses, Internet entrepreneurs and enthusiasts can gather to share ideas, and participate in the revolution of the virtual marketplace.

Welcome to The Future. I look forward to building it together.