The Cluetrain Manifesto, Disruptive Techonology, and Community, Identity and Design

Networked markets are changing the way business occurs in the 21^st century.  Customers can converse with each other and compare and contrast products in a way that was never possible before.  Companies are hesitant to take down their strict firewall protections that would allow networked workers to engage in conversations with the networked market.  The Cluetrain Manifesto by Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger introduces these new conversations in an elevator rap: “There’s a new conversation between and among your market and your workers.  It’s making them smarter and it’s enabling them to discover their human voices.”

While some companies are increasing their firewall protection and secrecy, others are opening up their ideas and innovation to the open source world.  Two such examples are Facebook and Second Life.  As stated previously in my post entitled “Howard Rheingold, Facebook, and SecondLife... Millionaires?” these companies are allowing outside programmers to increase the productivity of the software commonly referred to as open source. 

The Cluetrain Manifesto also provides 95 theses to be thought about and discussed.  Five of these theses hit a chord with my outlook on Disruptive Technology as it relates to Community, Identity and Design.   The five theses that I discuss in the following few paragraphs are #31, 45, 47, 48, and 85.  They are first listed below and then I comment on them.

31. Networked markets can change suppliers overnight. Networked knowledge workers can change employers over lunch. Your own "downsizing initiatives" taught us to ask the question: "Loyalty? What's that?"

45. Intranets naturally tend to route around boredom. The best are built bottom-up by engaged individuals cooperating to construct something far more valuable: an intranetworked corporate conversation.

47. While this scares companies witless, they also depend heavily on open intranets to generate and share critical knowledge. They need to resist the urge to "improve" or control these networked conversations.

48.  When corporate intranets are not constrained by fear and legalistic rules, the type of conversation they encourage sounds remarkably like the conversation of the networked marketplace.

85.  When we have questions we turn to each other for answers. If you didn't have such a tight rein on "your people" maybe they'd be among the people we'd turn to.

Thesis 31 discusses the loyalty of the consumer.  With the internet, a consumer can switch and change their choice within a matter of seconds.  And consumers no longer feel as guilty as they once did because priority one for companies today is the bottom line.  If loyalty is not as important as it once was, is there any impact on our virtual communities?  Does this change the identity of our communities?  Disruptive technologies such as cell phones, computers, and web 2.0 tools allow users to interact with many more communities than was once possible.  Users are no longer loyal to just one community but exist in more communities than we can count. 

Theses 45, 47, and 48 discuss networked conversations (discussion boards and blogs).  In the company intranet, conversation is boring, controlled, and regulated.  If companies were not constrained by fear as the manifesto suggests, corporate intranets would enable conversation that was very close to the conversation that occurs in networked markets.  Discussion boards, blogs, and wikis would be free from criticism and allow for creativity, innovation, and ideas.  These disruptive technologies would increase the productivity and success of the company.  Design would be redefined as something that allows for creativity, innovation, and ideas that were not controlled by corporate.

Finally, thesis 85 discusses the unavailability of conversations between the market and workers due to firewalls and other securities.  With the addition of disruptive technologies to our educational and corporate organizations, security has never been a bigger issue.  Firewalls and other securities help ensure that information does not come in (adult content in education) or go out (payroll information in corporations).  However, the blanket securities often cover too much i.e. school children cannot perform Google searches on breast cancer because the word “breast” is not allowed.  As securities come down and more access is given, conversations will increase the knowledge base of all.  Think of the day that students would be able to converse with breast cancer researchers via webcam.