The Cluetrain Manifesto

Here's another doubleheader review, this time of The Cluetrain Manifesto, the four-author print extension of the Web site of the same name. Hemos and Jason Bennett here dissect the book and provide some insight into where the cluetrain is steaming.

The Cluetrain Manifesto
author	Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger
pages	190
publisher	Perseus Books, 12/1999
rating	Suits:9/
reviewer	hemos, Jason Bennett
ISBN	0738202444
summary	The book based on the website, TCF is a radical vision of the impact of the Internet on business-as-usual.

Review One: hemos

It's not often that I actually read a book that's targeted at the business market. Such books often get sent to our offices here for review, and we usually hold a short ceremony in which we desecrate the books, then send them out to the vast CEO gulags we've started outside of town.

Scratch that last part. In any case, it is true that I usually manage to avoid "business" writing. I've mostly found that the point the authors attempt to make could have been said in 15 pages, versus the 150 they took to say it. Even the most beautiful graphs cannot disguise a lack of content.

However, when Doc Searls (one of the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto) passed along several copies of the book, I was a bit taken aback. I'd heard it being talked up by quite a number of people, all of whom were (hurried intake of breath!) Manager-types! But the people writing it -- from Doc, to Christopher Locke, Rick Levine and David Weinberger -- are all folks I've either met, heard or read before and people I respect.

That left me with a bit of a conundrum. If this book was written by people I respected, but as a rule business books have been the closest to Harlequin romances in terms of worth, what the heck was going on? The answer, my dear Watson, is quite elementary: this is not a business book.

Or rather, it is. But not a book about how business today should run and operate, about "disintermediation" and other piles of drivel that I think should be apparent for what they are to anyone willing to think. Instead, Cluetrain gets at the heart of what's actually going with this whole "Internet Revolution" -- people talking to people. And I think that particular message has gotten lost in the haze of convenience, price-difference and all the other media hyped ideas about what's going on with the business side of the Internet. What the authors of the book argue is that what's actually happening, in many ways, is that we are ripping down the artifical walls between producers and sellers. I agree. Disintermediation by any other name, maybe, but their treatment is refreshing in that it focuses on the human side. Any book that includes the mantra: "I am not a business. I am a human being." is good by me. And they also mention "undead evil." I'm serious.

OK, here's my take on the book with some sembalance of mental order: Cluetrain does a great job of exploding much of the hype about the present revolution. Instead, the revolution we're creating is something that humanity had for a while, and lost. We're bringing back the conversation now, and we're taking it global. That's the book in a nutshell. But the folks writing it can actually make that message interesting enough to read for roughly two hundred pages -- enough that you want to read the author credits, and drop them a line, like I did. The book also gathers strength from its use of excellent quotes and examples.

Who should this book be read by? You, of course, but also passing the book along to bosses and friends who are afraid of the Internet. I'm serious -- this book has become my defacto primer for people who don't understand what the Internet is going to do -- and doing -- and are scared about it.

And even if you don't trust me, read the sample chapter.

Review Two: Jason Bennet

Background

Greetings, all, and good to be back. After finishing some books in the past month, as well as finally getting some others written up, I'm ready to unleash a string of reviews on Slashdot. The first of these is one of the more talked-about books to come out recently, The Cluetrain Manifesto. I have to admit I didn't see the Web site until recently, and thus am a newcomer to the movement, but I must say the rhetoric is revolutionary, regardless of how much impact it eventually has. If nothing else, take a look at the site and read over the 95 theses. You may or may not agree with them, but they will make you think.

What's the book about?

Before addressing the various essays that make up the manifesto, I'll try to summarize the ideals and ideas behind the movement. Basically, commerce as we know it is a lie. For most of human history, trade has been about interacting with other people. Going to the market, seeing your friends, checking out the various stalls, conducting business, and generally doing the important things of life. Craftsmen proudly displayed their wares to all who would see, touch, and smell them. People discussed which merchants were fair, who had the best quality, and so on. The market was the center of human interaction, where politics, society and business merged (see the Greeks for an excellent example). The Industrial Revolution changed all that, however. With the advent of mass production and economies of scale, production and consumption became all important. Craftsmanship was discarded in favor of turning out as much interchangeable product as possible, using interchangeable workers in interchangeable factories. The marketplace ceased to be a conversation, and became a one-way street, aimed directly at the consumer. The rise of mass media completed the transformation from conversation to lecture. No longer did customers roam the marketplace, but instead consumers were lulled, bribed and manipulated into buying the latest and greatest, because TV told them so. The idea of the interchangeable consumer came to be the industrial ideal. Nothing was left to chance: You could get anyone to buy anything made by anyone, and all that mattered was the money. This ideal never totally came to pass, of course, but it was the driving force behind many decades of business.

The Internet has broken these chains, however. The market no longer stares exlusively at the great tube, but instead is engaged in the greatest conversation in human history. Customers now tell each other what is happening, and shoot down the grandiose marketing schemes of giant corporations. You can now talk to hundreds of people in your town about the latest restaurants, which car dealer is best, or what doctors give the best care. The bazaar has returned with a vengeance. The mass media assume we are stupid; the Internet makes us collectively smart. The Internet is a conversation.

Commensurate with the redemption of customers from the bondage of industry, workers are no longer cogs in a great production machine, but are now talking to each other in ways they never could before. Hierarchies are broken when you can e-mail anyone, anytime, to give or get help. It doesn't matter where you sit, or what your place is, everyone has access. Even worse, those employees (nee' resources) and those customers can now talk to each other easily. The two great conversations, inside the business and inside the market, are on a collision course. The only question is, will that collision propel your business to new heights, or destroy it?

Chapter 1 is more or less an overview of what is to come, and where I drew the above summary from. In short, because of the Internet, you, the customer, now have a voice, the ability to make yourself heard to others over the din of advertising and other stilted "business communication." You know what business-speak sounds like, you know what people sound like, and you know what you prefer and who you believe. Just as the customer is empowered, so is the worker, precisely because of the knowledge that a network allows to flow. These conversations threaten to completely overthrow business as we know it, and their merger will transform the market.

Chapter 2 quickly sums up why we so desperately want our voice back: because we sacrificed it, traded our souls, to be good professionals. The Web allows us to be ourselves again.

Chapter 3 discusses what's behind the Web: the unique voice of each person participating in the conversation. These voices are carried along various conduits: e-mail and mailing lists, newsgroups, chat rooms, and personal Web pages. The chapter details various ways that these modes of communication are already breaking down the barriers among customers, and between business and customers, including a very interesting newsgroup exchange about Saturn automobiles. Most of this will be old hat to Slashdot readers, but likely not to suits. Authenticity is the key here, along with spontaneity and a human touch. All of these things are conveyed by people in a conversation, and not conveyed by brochures or Powerpoint presentations. It doesn't matter so much that your company participates in all of these conversations, as it does that it is honest when is does participate. Some examples of honest, open organizations (United, Sun's Java team, at least at first) and closed organizations (Intel with the Pentium bug, Java later on) are analyzed, with clear results: those companies that try to talk succeed, while those that don't talk only hurt themselves. Someone will be talking, and it had better be you.

The anecdote which opens chapter 4 sums up the theme: even after hearing about markets as conversations for several hours to a group, some people still don't get it. The first few paragraphs basically repeat what has already been stated: markets stopped being conversations around the time mass production and mass marketing took over. What replaced this conversation was a one-way message, delivered from business to consumers. Unfortunately, no one really wants to listen to an overblown hype machine. The entire role of marketing is to make us want what we are supposed to want, but don't really want. This anti-conversation, however, is slowly but surely being pushed back by the rich tones of conversation on the Web. The knowledge contained in these conversations increases exponentially as more and more people join the party. Attempts to dominate this conversation with targeted message, i.e. push technology, have failed utterly. No one wants another television. In point of fact, conversation built the Web, manifested in the open source movement. Apache, Linux and the rest are all products of conversations. These are living examples of what can be accomplished when the market talks. The only way for marketing to survive is to work with the conversation, to give it what it wants. No more brochureware, but real information that the market recognizes as such. Work with the customer on price. Truely reposition, don't just spout different lines. Marketing sees the consumer as the enemy. The conversation is waiting for them to realize what's happening. All you have to do is talk honestly, and people will listen and talk back.

Chapter 5 details the other side of this sea change -- the change within business. In a "hyperlinked organization," people don't need the fancy office building or the top-down bureaucracy, they just want to be able to work with those people that best let them get a job done. Employees (or, dare I say it, resources) need no longer be bound by lines on an organizational chart. People go to who they need to get what they need. Centralized control is replaced by a web of people working with whoever they need. Groups form and collapse on an ad-hoc basis to meet the demands of the moment. All of the knowledge generated is managed through people telling each other stories. We already have tons of information; what we need is more knowledge, more understanding. Human communication generates this understanding. Because of all of this communication, and lack of hierarchy, it is inevitable that your customers will join in. Business intranets will expand to include customers along with employees, working together to make sure everyone gets what he needs. Business as a message is dead; Business as a conversation is beginning.

Chapter 6 summarizes the points made so far, then launches into a treatise on the future of the Web. Unfortunately, we're asking the wrong questions. We don't need to ask questions out of fear of the Web, but out of our desire to converse. The conversation we have will shape the Web the way it needs to be. There's no easy way to do this, just a journey into the unknown.

Chapter 7 concludes the Manifesto by stating that the revolution has already begun, and it's too far gone to stop. What we must do now is break our old habits, and start behaving in a new way. It's so tempting to keep an old, patched machine going even when everyone knows it needs to be replaced. Just remember, "I am not a company, I am a human being."

What's Good?

This book will blow your mind, all the more so if you're new to the Internet or unsure about what it means. It presents a radical new way to think about how we interact with commerce and with each other. To some extent or another, I think we all feel what is being communicated here. We're all tired of being cogs, of being consumers, of being resources. We want to be people, friendly customers, employees. As the conclusion says, it's already too late to stop this transformation. The Internet will only grow, and its fundamental nature means that the old is gone, and the new is come. If you are in business, you need to understand what is happening. You can either surf the wave, or drown in it.

What's Bad?

Any controversial book has its issues, and Cluetrain is no exception. The only reason I gave the book a Geek rating of 7 is because you already know what is being said. You know how people talk in newsgroups, and you probably don't want to read 50 pages telling you that. You don't need to hear this message repeated five times in the course of 200 pages. It's a good read, but know that you're likely to skip some parts, because you're tired of being beaten over the head with something you've already figured out.

Having said that, I do have quarrels with a few points that Weinberger makes when he discusses how the Internet came to be. I get the impression that he feels that the Internet sprung from chaos like Athena from Zeus, magically appearing out of the mist of conversation alone. He certainly believes that hierarchy is counterproductive in the Internet age. "[T]he most complex network ever imagined...[the WWW] has been implemented without any central control whatsoever," he writes on page 130. What exactly are the IETF and the W3C then? Didn't a small group of people design TCP/IP? There was a conversation, of course, but there was also control and hierarchy. No good open-source project lacks a leader, and every movement needs its inspiration. The Internet might not be the encrusted bureaucracy of a megacorporation, but authority is helpful in getting things done. I find the quote "[t]he Web succeeded where the Internet failed ..." (page 142) especially interesting. Although, as he says, the Web gave us the user-friendly browser, I'd rather think the Internet spawned the Web, since it is what transports the Web. Oh, and if someone can tell me what a "Unixlike language (145)" is, I'd appreciate it. I also find humorous the notion that e-mail has to be poorly written to be authentic. Finally, Chapter 6 is far too much of a political rant for my taste. Wanting to push pornography to the side does not make one a control freak. Control is not a bad thing. Anyway, I'm ranting now myself. It's a good book, despite these issues.

So What's In It For Me?

I think I've already said that. :-) This is an important book. You might love it. You might hate it. You'll likely feel threatened by it. Nevertheless, you owe it to yourself to at least read the 95 Theses. They will make you think. If you're a business type, read this. You need to, especially if you're still learning this Internet thing. If you've been around, read it if you want. There'll be some full parts, but it will mean a lot. The revolution has already begun.

Purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

• Table of Contents
• Foreward
• The Cluetrain Manifesto
• Introduction
  1. Internet Apocalypso
  2. The Longing
  3. Talk is Cheap
  4. Markets are Conversations
  5. The Hyperlinked Organization
  6. EZ Answers
  7. Post-Apocalypso
• Acknowledgements
• About the Authors

I'm fed up with being told what to think

Whilst I'm sure this is an interesting book and that /.ers will all find it a great read, I'm sick and tired of the constant pressure for people who use the internet to "conform" to some kind of behavioural pattern. And I'm even more tired of being told that the net is bringing about some kind of radical "paradigm shift" in the way individuals and organisations interact.

All of this is just a dressing up of the naive political ideals of the majority of /. readers - that things are changing for the better, that world peace is possible and even round the corner and that technology will make the world a fundamentally better place to live. These ideals, while all very noble, don't seem to correspond to any kind of reality experianced by people living on the Earth today.

And yeah, I'm sure I'm going to be told I "don't get it" or some other platitude, but what people seem to forget here is that we all have our own views of life, and that these views are all valid in their own ways. But holding idealistic, head in the cloud views is just foolish - the only way you'll change the world is by looking at it and not some "manifesto" claiming to contain all the answers to the world's problems.

When people stop trying to control the thoughts of net users then things might change, but until then communist ideals of everyone being alike (or "getting it") will hold these changes back.

My $0.02

In my spare time, I work for a large corporation in a stuffy and typically conservative line of business (as a system analyst). We had an outlook several years ago where we could go with the kind of outline that is discussed in Cluetrain (before it was published). This made us very attractive to customers and the first in the industry to make many of the steps that we did. Now that this text has achieved the level of popularity that it has now, it has become a buzzword in such circles. I do believe that this text will become a path for many to follow, and instead of trying to emulate the 'big players', startups and existing companies alike will look to Cluetrain for insight.

I passed the CT manifesto around at my work

and the PHB, sales and marketing people all loved it. That site opened a dialogue I'd been trying to have with them for weeks, but wasn't able to get started. Perhaps because it carried the authority of being a nicely done page, or it had the presentation of being another revolutionary dotcom manifesto, I don't know. But I sent the link to the head of Marketing, and he read it and sent to everyone, with a "required reading" subject line.
Things have gotten better at our site and in our company. No longer is there a battle between the sales/marketing people and IT. We're on the same page, and we develop our site for the customer's experience. I like my job better, because I'm building technologies that make the web a nicer place for users. Marketing/sales likes their job better, because they understand what it's about now. And we all work together to make it happen. I haven't said, "There's no way any of my servers are going to do that, I'm not wasting cycles on that project" since that link went around.
And that is what the manifesto is, it's a translation of everything us webheads take for granted into business-speak so it's palatable to the phb's. Is it dumbed down in some places, and full of self-evident truisms? Sure, from our perspective. But anything that can help us show the rest of our companies what we do and where we need to go is ok by me.

Alternatively, consider the Glue Train...

The Glue Train Manifesto [gluetrain.com]

Christopher Locke

If you enjoy reading articles where companies get royally trashed for internet-related-stupidity, subscribe to Entropy Gradient Reversals [rageboy.com], an email newsletter from Chris Locke (one of the co-authors of this book), and his alter-ego, Rageboy.

========

Re:Individuality and egocentricism

advances, but try living in say, the Taliban-controlled parts of Afganistan and see how "wonderful" this period of time is. The 20th century has been the home of some of the worst violence and atrocities in history, and it is only people like you who are secure in your luxury that have the gall to say that.

The Taliban is overtly hostile to technology and Western ideals, so how can you blame technological progress for the condition of Afganistan? The county is controled by a bunch of crazy fundamentalist militants. They are about as far from the "cluetrain" as one can get. People like the leaders of the Taliban are directly responsible for the atrocities you speak of, and guess what, they've been around since the beginning of history! The Greeks, the Romans, the Vandals, the Aztecs, the Vikings, the Manchurians, etc. etc., they all slaughtered millions. There was no Golden Age, there was no primeval perfection, so get off your elitist moral high horse.

True individuality doesn't come from being brainwashed into false beliefs, it comes from within a person. But then again, I wouldn't expect the average /.er to be capable of that level of introspection.

I suppose your entire worldview was constructed in isolation, in some godlike feat of deduction? Oh tell us, great one, what wonderous insights you have divined in your solipsitic introspection!

Re:I'm fed up with being told what to think

When people stop trying to control the thoughts of net users then things might change, but until then communist ideals of everyone being alike (or "getting it") will hold these changes back.

You are in need of the platitude. When the message people are trying to get across is "Think for yourself, dammit!", how exactly does "getting it" become some type of conformity to a behavioural pattern?

what people seem to forget here is that we all have our own views of life, and that these views are all valid in their own ways

Then you DO get it, now try and pass it on.

I, for one, am looking forward to purchasing the book, not to read, but to pass along and spread the meme. Think for youself, dammit!
--

Re:I'm fed up with being told what to think

When people stop trying to control the thoughts of net users then things might change, but until then communist ideals of everyone being alike (or "getting it") will hold these changes back.

Yeah those damn commies again...

Cluetrain Thesis #79: We want you to drop your trip, come out of your neurotic self-involvement, join the party.

Apparrently they're not just commies, but dirty drug-addled hippies as well.

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