From William Du Bois, from a mailing list I'm on: Bush's Utopian Plan
for Peace and mine differ at the core. Hal Pepinsky, one of the
founders of peacemaking criminology, talks about the dynamics of
democracy and violence. He defines democracy as responsiveness —
we take each other into account. We may not change our agenda but we
take what the Other has to say into account. Violence is the opposite
of democracy. It is asserting your own will and refusing to take the
other into account......
Democracy Now! | EXCLUSIVE: DEMOCRACY NOW! Confronts Wesley Clark Over His Bombing Of Civilians, Use Of Cluster Bombs And Depleted Uranium And The Bombing Of Serb Television
democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/26/1632224track
this site | 5 links
How not to end an IM conversation
How not to end an IM conversation10/29/2003 01:17 AM Why is it that in IM conversations some people stick to you like flies
to the proverbial crap? New to...
End the Conversation
End the Conversation03/13/2003 10:26 AM Allen (12:06:43 AM): damn one day, i'll teach you to throw axes Allen
signed off at 12:06:48 AM. That's certainly...
Continuing the MT conversation
Continuing the MT conversation05/16/2004 07:12 PM Continuing the discussion about MT licenses, Movable Type clarified
and changed some of their terms. Having looked at some of...
Conversation with Joe Trippi
Conversation with Joe Trippi09/20/2004 07:26 PM Please join me in a conversation with Joe Trippi about his book, "The
Revolution Will not be Televised." We will stream it live at Of, By,
and For, this Friday the 24th at 2:00pm Pacific time. As you might
know, Trippi built the Dean for America campaign and started
rewriting...
I've been at a conference for
the last couple of days, and have spent a significant portion of that
time eavesdropping on conversations. Aside from the obvious
observations (that most people don't listen, and that men do most of
the talking and interrupting in mixed company conversations) what most astonished me
was the unintended lack of politeness and courtesy that seems to
characterize most conversations.
It's not that the participants are rude -- it's just that they seem to
lack mutually-understood and mutually-respected protocols to govern
conversation in a civilized manner. This, in a world in which we are
beleaguered by rules in almost everything else we do, seems remarkable
to me.
So I did a bit of research to see whether I could find some protocols,
some rules of behaviour, that work effectively regardless of the
number, gender or conversational style of the participants. The
longest-established protocol is also, it seems, the most
misunderstood.
This is the protocol of the Talking
Stick,
which has its roots in aboriginal American culture and in that of some
third-world cultures as well. The basic rules of the Talking Stick
protocol, from what I can ascertain, are as follows:
The person holding the Talking Stick is the only one who
can speak.Others must listen and not interrupt, even to ask clarifying
questions. The onus is on the speaker to be clear, brief, and
respectful.
Generally the person most respected by the group
(the
tribal elder, or the person selected by the elder to present the issue
to the group) talks first.
The Talking Stick is then passed
clockwise as each person
finishes, and makes one complete circle of the participants.
Participants with nothing to add simply pass the Stick along.
The person who spoke first asks then whether
additional
discussion is warranted, and if anyone thinks so, the Stick is again
passed around the circle.
There have been a number of 'improvements' suggested to this process,
such as allowing clarifying questions, allowing people to reach for
the
stick in any order, first-come, first-served, and summarization or
'voting' processes, but none of these enhancements has a distinguished
history and none in my opinion represents a significant improvement to
the basic protocol. Allowing the group to engage in two-person
iterative Q&A, or sidebar conversations, would seem to me to
abrogate the three duties of clarity, brevity and respectfulness, or
at
least render them less necessary. In some Talking Stick circles, if
you
take the stick you must begin your speech by briefly reiterating what
the previous speaker said, and only when that synopsis receives a nod
from the previous speaker can you begin saying your piece. In some
cases this might work brilliantly, but in others it could make the
conversation interminably long and repetitive.
It is not clear to what extent the Law of Two
Feet
applies in Talking Stick circles -- where if you find the discussion
valueless or frustrating you have the option to leave, without
repercussions, and perhaps start another conversation on the same or
another subject with those similarly inclined. The alternative would
be
to assume that if you chose to accept the invitation to join the
conversation in the first place, you owe the rest of the group the
courtesy of giving them your attention until it is finished. My
personal view is that this judgement (whether leaving a conversation
you find tedious is discourteous or not) is best left up to the
individual.
I have witnessed many 'moderated' conversations, where one person
decides who will speak next, or where people raise their hands to be
next to speak and a first-come, first-served honour system applies,
and
found them mostly frustrating. But anarchy, where the loudest voice
always prevails, seems to me even more so, and also unfair. Where the
participants are part of a hierarchy, and rank clearly determines
speaking priority, the result is too often not really conversation at
all, but rather an information reporting and instruction exercise.
I have witnessed, too, meetings that allow the listeners to use tacit
signals to prompt the speaker without interrupting them: Holding up a
green card means "I like what you're saying", a red card the opposite,
and a yellow card signals "I don't understand what you're saying".
They
tend not to work, I think, because the green encourages unnecessary
loquaciousness, the red is rarely used because it would be perceived
as
rude, and the yellow is rarely used because it might make the listener
appear stupid. Electronic equivalents (IMs that the speaker can read
on-screen while talking) present the same discouragements, and also
are
more of a distractions than most speakers can handle on the fly.
One of my favourite conversational formats is the interview/Q&A,
where one (or more) persons pose questions and the other(s) restrict
themselves to answering them. There is a certain inherent democracy in
such conversations -- each side gives up certain speaking rights in
return for receiving others. Unrehearsed, they require considerable
skill and agility to pull off eloquently. Rehearsed, they can be
extremely effective at transferring knowledge but they become less
conversations than performances.
So my sense, based more on observations of what doesn't work than what
does, would be that the use of a Talking Stick or similar icon might
be
very helpful, even in two-person conversations (to reduce propensity
to
interrupt). I'm ambivalent about whether passing the Stick clockwise
or
allowing anyone to grab it next providing they satisfactorily
summarize
the last speaker's message first, would work better -- and I suspect
it
would depend on the subject and the conversational style of the
participants. I do like the idea of using a subtle timer
to reinforce the importance of clarity and brevity, which seem so
absent in most modern conversations that the resulting incoherence is
often unintentionally hilarious to the eavesdropper. Beyond that, I'm
not partial to any 'improvements' to the basic four-rule Talking Stick
process described above.
What's worked for you? Have you tried using such techniques, and when
are they effective (and not)? Are there other techniques, newer or
older, that work better, and when are they appropriate? And what of
telephone and Skype conversations, or those anarchic multi-party IM
sessions? Could a 'virtual Talking Stick' be introduced to organize
such conversations? It should be easy enough for the technology to
handle, but has anyone actually tried imposing this kind of discipline
on non-face-to-face conversations? And perhaps most important, does
practice using these techniques tend to make more polite, respectful
and articulate conversations second nature? Or is there some reason
I'm
missing why interruption and 'louder voices prevail' protocols are so
prevalent in our conversations, seemingly by default?
The long conversation05/27/2004 06:26 PM Guardian,UK-16 hours ago ... Google is perhaps the most obvious
clue-holder, with its corporate maxim "Don't be evil", its brand
new corporate weblog and its all-round fluffy, friendly ...
For about three years now - I'm been hemming and hawing and giving
people a hard time and (apparently) acting belligerent - about Open
Identities.
About the notion of open DNS-like indices of people. And what we
could do with them. You see I spent much of teh 90's desinging
systems that relied uypon a theoretical notion - that noadasys is
called social software and social networking. And at the core of that
- is digital identity.
So as the world has caught up with my ideas, it's becoming more and
more important that we DO IT RIGHT!
Now Tribe is calling that the
PeopleWeb, Microsoft has a [can't talk about it but will soon]
platform and Dick Hardt and his Sxip
Networks is rolling out.
kjartanmannes: so whats next for Mr Johnson? fuzzygroup: in what
context ? kjartanmannes: well, you've been slashdotted so what is
your new goal in life?
My sincere thanks to all the messages of encouragement, nice
feedback and other comments.
I spent some time on the phone with the folks at GoDaddy today and
they have a few ideas on what is going on with the server and are
going to try a few things on the box we will keep our fingers
crossed.
We will see what happens over the next few days.
Joe Trippi: Down from the Mountain(IT Conversation)
Technorati has added an
astoundingly smart new feature, and BoingBoing is
showcasing it. As Cory explains:
"Other blogs
commenting on this post" at the bottom of our posts -- this is a link
to Technorati's index of all the blogs that have linked to each of
Boing Boing's posts. It's not quite a Discuss link, but if you have a
blog and you post a comment about one of our posts to it, Technorati
will find it and index it."
I'll talk more about
this later -- I'm busy with book stuff today -- but let's just say
that I can't wait to get this enabled on my blog.
A Conversation With Master Replicas
A Conversation With Master Replicas04/13/2004 03:36 PM I recently visited Master Replicas headquarters in California, during
which I was able to sit down with Scott Vogel, President and CEO, and
ask him some questions that are on the minds of Master Replicas
collectors.
I think the MP3 blogs (which
are essentially annotated playlists) might well be taking the middle
ground in the P2P vs music industry wars - I hope that the record
industry will begin to see the value in what these grassroots
enthusiasts are doing to promote their music. On the other hand, a
large part of making these playlists under current laws involves
turning your back on the major labels and concentrating on the music
libre, the 'free music', the stuff that wants to be shared. Those
artists that make their tracks freely available online are the ones
that will benefit most from the collaborative filtering and
recommendation networks that are being set up. [Hublog]
Let's extend that remark: Any professional whose work is visible on
the Net will become part of the conversation that establishes
reputation and creates opportunity. The blog is an active
résumé that enables you to participate -- by proxy
-- in that conversation....
Here's the bottom line. What Alf calls "collaborative filtering and
recommendation networks" will rival -- and my guess is, largely
supplant -- conventional marketing and promotion. But if those
networks can't find you, they won't be able to help you." [Jon's
Radio]
Interesting when thought of in the context of libraries. It's
exactly why our services - especially our online catalogs - need to be
open and exposed. Exhibit A: LibraryLookup.
Frank conversation about torture
Frank conversation about torture05/10/2004 08:54 AM Over at Frank Paynter's there's been an interesting and useful
discussion of my attempt to find a way for the left and the right to
agree on a policy condemning torture. (As I've noted several times
now, I should have talked not about the right wing but about the Rush
wing.) Frank's first blog entry about it is here and his reply to my
reply is here. Be sure to read the comments where I am taken to task
rather severely by some exceptionally thoughtful people. (I reply
there also.)...
a conversation with marianne pearl
a conversation with marianne pearl05/02/2004 11:53 PM A conversation with Marianne Pearl is one of the more
moving interviews I have ever heard and was certainly a highlight of
the weekend. She is a beautifully calm person with seemingly the
right approach to an awfully violent world.
A Conversation with Wayne Rosing
A Conversation with Wayne Rosing10/28/2003 11:07 PM An iterview with one of my bosses, Google's VP of engineering. An
incredibly smart and experienced guy. (I'm not sucking up; he doesn't
read my blog. ;) Interesting if you want to learn more about Google's
engineering culture. One great quote:
I think the sum total of what I hope for the first decade of this
century is some variant on the memex. We're going to have the vast
majority of high-quality, permanent, high-value, human knowledge
available to everyone, from many places, in multiple forms.
And that's fundamentally going to change humanity in as big a way as
the printed word did—when it became inexpensive to replicate the
printed word.
Yes, I know I liked John
Gray's book,
found it liberating in fact, but I still believe people are good at
heart, and their instincts are right if they can re-learn to listen to
them. And remember Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of
thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it
is the
only thing that ever has."
So
your argument is that we're going to save the world either by some
massive act of collective altruism, even though such a thing is
unprecedented, or by some subversive act by some clever noble clique
of
do-gooders. You know, some people would say that Bush's neocon
born-again cabal fit Margaret Mead's 'small group of world-changers'
definition perfectly. If that's what she was referring to, small
groups
of nazis and megalomaniac idealists, we're in trouble. Or is your
'small group' going to put birth control in the water supply and
sabotage civilization until we have anarchy and chaos? -- which is
actually the neocons' dream situation, since if that were to happen
they'd just take over and feel self-justified in doing so, as they
would see you as terrorists.
We
overcame slavery, we gave women the vote, we invented written language
and a lot of other amazing things, including birth control
technologies, we've made democracy, an improbable way of running the
world, work, and we've found ways to strike a balance in the economy
between complete totalitarianism and complete laissez-faire. We're
learning what doesn't work,
we have unprecedented peer-to-peer grassroots communication and
organization, and we have more knowledge available to a larger
percentage of the population than ever before. And instead of just
writing dystopias, many people are actually proposing practical ways
to
bring about massive change.
The
last century featured more murders, more imprisonment, more torture,
more war deaths, and greater extremes in distribution of wealth and
power than any in our history. Every technology we've invented has a
dark side that has been more effectively exploited than its positive
applications. And as for communication, the digital divide is wider
than ever. You shouldn't judge the state of the world by the view from
your rosy little corner of it.
Stories
are all we are. When we have learned new stories, we have become very
different creatures very quickly, in a generation or two. It's our
ingenuity, our ability to change and respond to new and intuitively
better, healthier, happier ways to live, and learn from each other
peer-to-peer that makes me optimistic and hopeful, not new
technologies, which I admit are a double-edged sword.
Stories
also allow fanatics and maniacs to raise huge and bloodthirsty armies,
and allow cults, including most modern religions and political
parties,
to brainwash people to act against both their personal and collective
interest. Myths and other stories allow people to tolerate and live in
denial of atrocities going on all around them. Religious stories have
prompted most of history's most brutal and protracted wars. And we're
so adaptable that we learn to live a life of never-ending oppression,
subjugation and deprivation, and we delude ourselves that our pathetic
lives are good, healthy, deserved, getting better and the only way to
live.
But we
are also capable of forgetting, forgiving and moving on quickly, when
a
better story, a better way of living, is told to us. And in the last
decade a significant minority of the population is on a roll -- better
informed, more inventive, more attuned to and knowledgeable about
that's needed, what's happening and what's possible than ever before.
They're able to use networking technology to make creative, synthetic,
analogical and metaphorical leaps, collaboratively,
in ways that would have been almost unimaginable even a generation
ago.
We have already witnessed, in the 1960s, a huge shift in mainstream
thinking and worldviews occurring in an astonishingly short period of
time, and if we could do something like that again now we have much
more powerful tools and much greater knowledge to do it with, so it
might actually endure this time.
Pure
romanticism. The 1960s weren't nearly as rosy and liberated as you
remember them. Many guys jumped on the bandwagon in complete ignorance
and indifference to the peace and liberation movements -- they were
merely attracted by the promise of cheap dope and easy sex. Your faith
(and it's nothing more than faith, since there's no solid reasoning
behind it) that we could start a similar movement in this century and
this time it would endure and bring about ubiquitous change, is simply
the left-wing version of the right-wingers' Rapture. People don't
change, cultures don't change, and there's an unprecedented level of
investment in maintaining the status quo working against any little
movement that might threaten that. We are programmed by our DNA to
spend almost all of our time and energy living moment to moment and
distracted by the minutiae of constant and trivial decisions. And even
if this were not so, as Gray argues so articulately we have no 'free
will' or collective consciousness. Even as 'individual' creatures we
are merely collections of cells, molecules and organs, each doing what
they do, largely for mutual benefit, and almost entirely (99.9999%)
subconscious. So belief that we can somehow get our personal
act together, let alone one at the level of some higher social order,
and transform ourselves into what we are not, seems to me the height
of
folly, a form of leftist religious fanaticism.
There
you
go, relying on science again, that collection of unreliable and creaky
models of reality, to make your argument. The whole, at every level of
aggregation, is always greater than the sum of the parts. Gaia is much
more than just all individual life on Earth. We as individual and
wondrous creatures are more than a mere collection of our cells,
molecules and organs. And I'm not being spiritual here. Forget about
'consciousness' and these other academic and utterly meaningless
concepts. We as individuals, and our planet as an organism of a
different order, are mostly what happens between our composite parts.
We are sensation, reaction, communication, learning, understanding,
and
the stories that recall them. Most of what we are at both the creature
level and at the Gaia level are what is happening in the
intersections,
margins and edges around the component parts. That is where our true
sense of self and meaning resides, that is where our instincts draw
their wisdom, that is what our DNA remembers and tells us to do. Your
myopic science, looking at individual organisms in isolation, is no
more able to understand the great truths of life, and the nature of
our
existence, than a collector dissecting dead monarch butterflies is
able
to comprehend the astonishing transformation of that creature's life,
or how it could have 'learned' where and how to migrate when three
generations have transpired since the last generation, or how sun and
flowers and smells make a butterfly happy and inform its understanding
of the purpose of its life.
Let's
look at this argument. You're saying, I think, that almost all of what
we are is subconscious, and that an important part of what we are is
our relationships with 'others' outside ourselves. Yes? OK. So then
you're saying that what can/will save us is something in our collective unconsciousness or subconsciousness?
That deep down 'we' intuitively know what needs to be done, what is
happening, and what is possible, and will use that knowledge to
collectively do what is in our collective interest. Well, at least
that's better than relying on gods. But if we had this great
collective
unconsciouness or subconsciousness, wouldn't we have been able to
figure out, even before Einstein did, that almost all human
inventions,
notably in the media (since the invention of writing and the printing
press), in transportation (since the invention of the lever, the
inclined plane, the sledge and the wheel) and in the tapping of stored
energy (since the invention of controlled fire) would have more
negative consequences for our planet than positive ones, and hence
prevent them from emerging? No, don't give me that nonsense that the
global population is leveling off because we somehow 'know' it must,
since people have repeatedly told researchers the only reason they don't have one or
two more
kids each is that they can't financially afford it (for now). If we
('we' being either all humanity or all creatures on the planet) are
our
own collective guiding hand, that guiding hand has done a pretty lousy
job over the last 30,000 years. Just because we've lost touch with
nature and Gaia, you say? I think it's more likely that we're just an
exceptionally fierce and adaptable species which emerged by random
accident from the primeval soup and, like all fierce and adaptable
species in Earth's history, plagued (in the literal sense of the word,
not the moral one) the planet until a meteor came along, or a climate
change or new species evolved that preyed on excessive numbers of the
plague species, and restored equilibrium and the selected preference
of
known life for biodiversity. Disequilibrium is neither new or
unnatural
in the universe. And that, more than the crown of creation, more even
than the sum of our 'stories', is what we humans really are.
Previously on
this blog, I've called for a separation of hosting from
aggregation. I want to be able to maintain authoritative data on one
site and have other sites use it for their aggregation.
When I read Ted Leung's entry Microcontent
personality disorder and Steve Mallett's comments on it, my
immediate thought was that they could both have what they want if we
could separate where we host our data with where it is aggregated and
made "social".
Marc Canter (whose work around Digital Lifestyle Aggregators is
definitely worth following) resp
onds to Steve Mallett. Marc is spot on that people have their
information all over the place. But I still believe that if systems
are built to support a separation between hosting and aggregation,
they'll support both the distribution of primary data and the kind of
"self-hosting" that a certain segment like Steve and myself want.
Bottom line is all combinations of centralized/decentralized
hosting/aggregation should be possible.
It's not that hard to do. Sites that aggregate just need to provide
a mechanism where users can point to their data hosted somewhere else
rather than have to re-enter their data in multiple aggregators.
Aggregators then keep customers based on the value of their
aggregation, not the lock-in of being the hosts of people's valuable
data. People who want hosting for their pictures, blogs, etc can use
hosting services to do it. But their choice of hosting service should
not impact their participating in aggregation and the social aspects
of micro-content that follow.
Meta conversation on metadata11/01/2003 08:35 AM Jay "Misspells His Own Last Name" Fienberg has trenchant comments on
my article about metadata. A big part of our difference may have to do
with the loose (= wrong) way I define metadata. Part of it may have to
do with where we're looking at metadata issues. E.g., Jay thinks
there's no essential difference between arguments over FOAF and over
the format by which we express date data; I'm instead thinking about
the argument over what categories of info we need to exchange
information about our friends. The argument over how to express that
info is, I agree, important...
Say 'Nazi' or 'Hitler' and End the Conversation
Say 'Nazi' or 'Hitler' and End the Conversation01/07/2004 03:16 PM Putting Hitler into Net conversations tends to kill them. Now there's
a mock award for the stupidest comparison of Hitler to some modern
event.
Kailee’s on Runescape
this morning, exasperated at an offline friend’s actions online.
A few days ago, she told me about her Runescape boyfriend. Seems she
was talking to someone in the game, and he asked if he could be her
“bf.” She thought that meant “best friend,” so
she said sure. Only when he dumped her did she find out that
“bf” means “boyfriend.” She took it pretty
well, though, considering she didn’t know she was dating him to
begin with.
Today, however, she’s frustrated. She’s
on Runescape chatting with a friend who lives a few blocks away.
Apparently the friend has Kailee’s login and password (red
flag!) and has been logging in as Kailee now and then. At some point,
the friend was on as Kailee when the ex-bf came back and wanted to be
her bf again, so the friend said sure, not realizing Kailee
didn’t care. Now, though, the friend is upset that Kailee has a
bf and she doesn’t, even though Kailee doesn’t want a bf
and the friend is the one that said “sure” in the first
place. Even worse, she won’t interact with Kailee on Runescape
because she thinks Kailee is “on a date.”
I asked
Kailee if she knows the friend’s login and password, and her
response was, “One of them.” I don’t know why I
expected the answer to be “yes” or “no” in
this day and age, but I did. She went on to say that the friend
has several accounts, and it’s just too hard to remember them
all.
Some interesting life lessons going on here, but the
scariest part is how freely Millennials trade identities without a
care in the world. We’ve repeatedly told Brent not to give his
Runescape password to his friends, but they all know each
others’ accounts and log in as someone else. It must make for
interesting conversations when you don’t know what you might
have said before.
Macs, passion, and continuing the conversation06/06/2005 12:09 AM I got mentioned over on a Jupiter Research blog today by Michael
Gartenberg: Our Passion, Your whatever :) - Microsoft's Mediocre
Marketing. Sadly, he didn't actually link here. The backstory: I wrote
this piece in March about how early adopters...
Aristotle and conversation: Maybe I wasn't completely wrong
Aristotle and conversation: Maybe I wasn't completely wrong06/17/2005 04:25 PM A couple of days ago, I wrote up a thought that I was afraid sounds
better than it is. But now I think maybe it isn't as hollow as I'd
thought. The idea was this: Aristotle says that to know x is to place
x into a relationship of similarity and difference: A robin is a type
of bird (same as all other birds) but is a unique species of bird
(different from all other birds). This is a world-changing insight,
especially since Aristotle thought it was true not just of knowledge
but of reality. But as our belief in...
Technorati and the evolving corporate conversation
Update 3/9/05 @ 9:16 AM: Dave Sifry, CEO of Technorati, has a nice
writeup of the situation from Technorati's perspective. Not only
are they not censoring their employees' weblogs, they are sticking by
an employee (and a relatively new one at that) who did something
foolish when they could have just pulled the plug on him. I especially
liked the point about the speed at which the situation was
handled...people these days want instant results (it's easy to see how
weblogs tie into this), but things don't always work that way. Note to
self: slow down sometimes, will ya?
Update 3/8/05 @ 9:11 AM:Niall has posted an apology on his site with a little more
information on what happened. Here's his most recent take on
Technorati's policy:
It is for this reason it is recommended that Technorati
employees seek the opinion of a coworker if they are unsure of how a
post might be interpreted by others, to lend a fresh pair of eyes and
an experienced mind to your intended message.
Read the whole thing...I don't think Technorati's position on this
is unfair at all. It's a tough issue and it's going to be messy at
times (as we saw with Mark Jen's
situation at Google). Companies in the past have typically been
very top down with everything, including the "message", emanating from
upper management. As companies have become more open, they've relied
on their employees "drinking the Kool-Aid" to ensure a uniform message
to the outside world. But lately, customers have been wanting
something more authentic and some companies, particularly in the
blogging space, are attempting to provide it. And they're probably
gonna get a little bloodied for it in the short term. Is it even
possible for a company to participate in a conversation in the
marketplace with multiple opinions represented, some of which may even
be in direct opposition with each other? How will customers react to a
company disagreeing with itself in public? (Answer: probably not very
well in the short term.)
Note: I modified the title of the post to something more accurate
and less inflammatory given the situation as it currently stands.
Original post
On Saturday, Niall Kennedy posted some Photoshopped "propaganda
posters from the 1940s to express how corporations would like to
control what their employees say on a weblog, at a bar, or even to
their families". At some point after that, he took the post down after
Technorati (his employer)
complained about it and replaced it with the following:
Technorati would rather I did not express an opinion on
issues such as corporate blogging policies that are affecting the
world of weblogs. This post has been overwritten and my artwork posted
to Flickr is now marked as private and available only to Flickr
contacts marked as friends.
Yes, I was threatened with "serious
consequences" for not seeking corporate approval for a weblog posting
relating to an industry issue. Tomorrow will undoubtedly bring many
conversations about if employees are allowed to have their own voice
and write weblog entries without passing through an executive
mouthpiece first.
It should be interesting. A blogging company
applying strong filters to employee weblogs about public issues that
affect the community.
If my original post is not up for a while,
you will know how things turned out. I love the industry and writing
about weblogs, technology, and search and hope to continue to share my
personal point of view in the future.
Technorati executives are concerned about how employee
weblogs expressing opinions may be interpreted as an official
Technorati position. All Technorati employees have been asked to
review weblog posts with staff members before posting. I
reinstated my original post this morning and I am ready to willing to
hear the community's response to my individual voice. I hope to
continue to share my passion for the industry through my weblog
without editorial oversight.
For a company that relies on aggregating content by scraping full
posts from almost 8 million blogs, vetting their employees'
personal writing seems like a curious (not to mention ironic
and hypocritical) position for Technorati to take. Aside from this
specific incident, I've noticed that blogs written by people who go to
work in the blogging industry usually get updated less, are less about
blogging than they were before as well, and are also less critical of
blogging. If everyone who's really into blogging gets snatched up by
blogging companies and eventually clam up, I don't see that as a
positive thing for the industry as a whole.
MediaGuardian.co.uk | Media | The long conversation
MediaGuardian.co.uk | Media | The long conversation06/01/2004 02:27 AM The long conversation - Giles Turnbull spoke to the authors of the
seminal Cluetrain Manifesto - five years after it first appeared
online
media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1225295,00.html track
this site | 3 links
Politics as a Loosely Connected Conversation
Politics as a Loosely Connected Conversation01/28/2004 06:41 PM The estimable David Weinberger has launched Loose Democracy. "I make
no apologies for my enthusiasm about the way in which the Web can
improve our democracy. About this issue I am unabashedly
partisan," he says. This is going to be good.
