Thursday, June 15, 2006

conversations and manifestos

Hugh Macleod is an influence of mine. He riffs on markets-are-conversations type stuff, even though at times, the force of his talk also contradicts notions of equality. Not everyone in the global conversation is putting up the same ante. Entertaining and thought provoking, or viscerally thrilling stuff is, as always, valuable. It is persuasive. And as Seth Godin points out, we pay attention for it.

Web 2.0 is a wonderful dream; so was universal suffrage. In 17th and 18th century political thought, a common notion was that the common good would magically take flight in a new world of equal democratic access. But universal access was bypassed, giving way to deference, propaganda, disallussionment, and the rise of fascism.

So I wonder if those of us splunking around in what Hugh calls the blogosphere "echochamber" are missing the point. People will try to get their way, using conversatioal tactics, or brute force. What's more, many of us long to be controlled, and to see other controlled. It's an aspect of nature, and may even be part of our animal nature.

If web 2.0 is coming, it wont make conversation simply win out of propaganda, even if we wanted it to. The animal realm cant be shooed away by loose talk.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree. And Hugh MacLeod is also an influence of mine. Nice blog BTW

John Dumbrille said...

thanks neil!