Category Archives: culture

The Cluetrain Manifesto

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I came across this from reading Chris Locke’s ‘Mystical Bourgeoisie’ blog (which I read whenever it is updated – I’ll do a post about that separately), and it wasn’t at all what I expected. It was good to read something totally surprising, which was also informative about the business world, and personally clarifying for me.

The Cluetrain Manifesto began as a website developed by Locke and some friends, articulating the way in which the internet was changing the viability of standard business models. In sum, the cluetrain manifesto argues that the internet allows a genuine market to re-emerge, the genuine market being a meeting place of individuals, with a high level of human contact, and consequent structures of trust and authenticity shaping the boundaries of trade.

For example, if you are considering purchasing a digital camera, it is now possible to use internet search engines, not simply to find the cheapest model, or the cheapest outlet for any particular model, but also to discuss the qualities of the different models with other users. In this situation where there is a wealth of available information to the purchaser the producer of any particular digital camera can no longer enjoy what economists call ‘informational asymmetry’ – we can’t be brow-beaten or intimidated by the (apparent) possession of superior knowledge on the part of any particular seller. Often (and this has often been my experience in places like Dixons!) the purchaser knows >much
In this context, a viable business model is one that ‘lowers the barriers’ between the company and the purchaser. There is no benefit to a company in enforcing ‘company speak’ or a ‘line to take’ – all that happens is that the purchaser comes to the reasonable conclusion that this particular company ‘doesn’t have a clue’, and therefore disengages. A company which, on the other hand, allows its own workers to speak directly to customers, without insisting on corporate ‘firewalls’ (whether electronic or social) stands to benefit directly from the high quality human interactions (trust) thus generated.

This might seem overblown – surely the internet is, even now, a minority pursuit, and most companies can safely ignore it, at least for some time to come? This ignores what economists call ‘marginal income’. If a company manufactures widgets, the cost of manufacturing widgets is split between the ‘fixed costs’ (establishment of factory, salaries etc) and the ‘variable costs’ (the material used to make a particular widget). So to make any money at all, the company must first cover all of its fixed costs; once that has been done, then the level of profit accruing from the extra sales of widgets increases radically. Let us assume that a company has to sell 100 widgets to cover its fixed costs in any particular year. If the company sells 110 widgets then those extra ten widgets only have ‘variable costs’ associated with them (the raw material from which the widget is made). That raw material cost is generally a much smaller proportion of the total cost of each widget. What this means is that the ‘marginal widget’ – ie the widget that is sold last – provides a much bigger contribution to overall profits than the first widget; and each extra widget sold is crucial. However, if a small proportion of the company’s market is put off from purchasing widgets due to the company ‘not having a clue’ – ie behaving in a bureaucratic and generally inhuman fashion – then the sale of those marginal widgets becomes immensely problematic. Even if the internet only diminishes sales by a few percent – that few percent can make all the difference to a company between profit and loss. This is why the internet hugely magnifies the effect of informational symmetry between buyer and seller – it is the impact that it has on the margins which levers in huge social and cultural changes at the level of the corporation.

The theme in the book which most struck me, however, was the emphasis upon the human voice. That the traditional market was one in which the human voice made the difference between buying and selling, and where all participants become experts at sniffing out the bullshit. The development of Fordism in all its forms minimised this historic aspect of the economy – giving rise to the corporation in all its alienated and alienating glory – and it is this which the cluetrain manifesto argues is coming to an end. The most important thing for any company now is to be a recognisably human institution, with recognisable human beings working within it. One recent example – the Times newspaper is encouraging its writers to start blogging directly, as with Ruth Gledhill or David Aaranovitch. If there is to be a viable economic model for news organisations, it will surely be along those lines.

This is, of course, why it made so much sense to me – for the blog is indeed the best expression of particular human voices on the ’net, and it is why I enjoy blogging so much. Here I can express my own thoughts, in my own voice, and it is liberating.

So: an excellent book, thoroughly recommended. It is available free, on-line, here.

Interesting site

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If you can cope with the California ‘edge’ have a look at this

“All of this I’ve-arrived-and-you-haven’t stuff is stupid. It suggests that life is about destinations and that once you’ve arrived, you’re done growing and can just relax and sip fruity drinks for the rest of your life.”

Quite so. It’s about the way, not the end.

The Man comes around

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And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder:
One of the four beasts saying: “Come and see.”
And I saw. And behold, a white horse.

There’s a man goin’ ’round takin’ names.
An’ he decides who to free and who to blame.
Everybody won’t be treated all the same.
There’ll be a golden ladder reaching down.
When the man comes around.

The hairs on your arm will stand up.
At the terror in each sip and in each sup.
Will you partake of that last offered cup,
Or disappear into the potter’s ground?
When the man comes around.

Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers.
One hundred million angels singin’.
Multitudes are marching to the big kettle drum.
Voices callin’, voices cryin’.
Some are born an’ some are dyin’.
It’s Alpha’s and Omega’s Kingdom come.

And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree.
The virgins are all trimming their wicks.
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree.
It’s hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

Till Armageddon, no Salaam, no Shalom.
Then the father hen will call his chickens home.
The wise men will bow down before the throne.
And at his feet they’ll cast their golden crown.
When the man comes around.

Whoever is unjust, let him be unjust still.
Whoever is righteous, let him be righteous still.
Whoever is filthy, let him be filthy still.
Listen to the words long written down,
When the man comes around.

Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers.
One hundred million angels singin’.
Multitudes are marchin’ to the big kettle drum.
Voices callin’, voices cryin’.
Some are born an’ some are dyin’.
It’s Alpha’s and Omega’s Kingdom come.

And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree.
The virgins are all trimming their wicks.
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree.
It’s hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

In measured hundredweight and penny pound.
When the man comes around.

And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts,
And I looked and behold: a pale horse.
And his name, that sat on him, was Death.

And Hell followed with him.

Johnny Cash, who I’m also listening to a lot at the moment…

Bach, God, atheism

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Good post at Samizdata here about Bach’s religious inspiration. There is also a particularly wonderful reactionary rant in the comments with which I have a great deal of sympathy.

“What was peculiar about the period c.1800-1950 was the attempt to assimilate this perceptual disorder [atheism] to the cults of democracy and materialist science– as if methods of studying the nuts and bolts of sublunary life could somehow become an alternative to religious rituals, and as if all men (a fortiori, women) were equally fit to govern themselves and others. These top-down doctrines never captured the innermost hearts of ordinary men, and are now evaporating– alongside much else that was ‘modern’ 100 years ago– as the natural piety and humility of Man reasserts itself.”

What are gay men for?

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Michael Vasey was a lovely man, whom I met a handful of times before his very untimely death. He sometimes asked the question, what are gay men for? Mark Vernon gives one answer here. “So what are gay men and lesbians for now? They are a reminder, in a world coloured by the cold calculations of competitiveness, that people can love one another.”

SUV spirituality

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Consider the appeal of an SUV (what we in England call ‘4X4’s or, more to the point, ‘Chelsea Tractors’).

You are strong. You are safe. You are independent and self-sufficient, accountable to no-one. If there is a collision, the other car will come off worst. You are elevated above the common herd, able to look further into the distance. You can trek across exotic locations, you can even cross the Strood when the tide is high.

The appeal of an SUV is to a particular mentality – a mentality which owes just about everything to Modern philosophy. It is the Cartesian ego transformed by the parameters of the internal combustion engine. Iris Murdoch describes it as presented by Kant:

“How recognisable, how familiar to us, is the man so beautifully portrayed in the Grundlegung, who confronted even with Christ turns away to consider the judgement of his own conscience and to hear the voice of his own reason. Stripped of the exiguous metaphysical background which Kant was prepared to allow him, this man is with us still, free, independent, lonely, powerful, rational, responsible, brave, the hero of so many novels and books of moral philosophy.” (From ‘The Sovereignty of the Good’)

This man drives an SUV, for the SUV expresses all those virtues in kinematic form. The culture which reveres these attributes calls forth in mechanical expression an embodiment of it’s own soul – and so we arrive at the crisis of our culture. We are, in James Howard Kunstler’s words, up a cul-de-sac in a cement SUV with an empty tank.

This is a spiritual problem: the roots of the crisis are spritual; the only possible solution is spiritual. Consider those virtues expressed in the SUV; consider most of all the virtue of autonomy – the independent man, accountable to none, moving off to decide by the light of his own conscience and his own reason what is good. The child of Martin Luther permanently protesting against external authority.

Now consider the voice of a Modern atheist: I do not need an external authority to tell me be to be good. I do not need to find a purpose for my life from a religious tradition. I choose my own tradition! I am the master of my destiny!
I SHALL DRIVE MY OWN SPIRITUAL UTILITY VEHICLE!

The point of a religious tradition – the definition of one perhaps – is that we are accountable to a higher authority. That authority need not be a God as understood by theistic tradition. It might simply be ‘the truth’, or – as with Plato and Aristotle – ‘the good’. The key thing is that it is not amenable to personal choice. A person is accountable, and shall give an account. The person is open to being engaged by other people who also consider themselves accountable, and that shared accountability and shared purpose provides the irreplaceable glue of human society. It is precisely that communal glue which the driver of the SUV repudiates. For the driver of the SUV must at all costs be a sovereign ego at the centre of his body – the homunculus this time, not watching a screen, but behind the wheel.

The SUV – sport and spiritual, car and soul – symbolises all that will be left behind on the other side of Peak Oil.

Bob puts it well:

You may be a construction worker working on a home,
You may be living in a mansion or you might live in a dome,
You might own guns and you might even own tanks,
You might be somebody’s landlord, you might even own banks

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

Theologians in unlikely places

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I didn’t know that Alex Kapranos studied theology at university.

Wonderful.

Some say you’re trouble, boy
Just because you like to destroy
All the things that bring the idiots joy –
Well, what’s wrong with a little destruction?

And the Kunst[?] won’t talk to you
Because you kissed St Rollo Adieu
Because you robbed a supermarket or two
Well, who gives a damn about the prophets of Tesco?

That last line might be ‘profits’ of Tesco of course…