Everything Is Miscellaneous

Posted on June 3, 2007 by Steve Mays

David Weinberger’s latest book —Everything Is Miscellaneous— is a philosophical look at “the power of the new digital disorder.” A few nuggets:

“Individuals thinking out loud now have weight, and authority and expertise are losing some of their gravity. It’s not whom you report to and who reports to you or how you filter someone else’s experience. It’s how messily you are connected and how thick with meaning are the links.

It’s not what you know, and it’s not even who you know. It’s how much knowledge you give away. Hoarding knowledge diminishes your power because it diminishes your presence. (p.230)

“A playlist is an important means of self-expression. The motivation is to say, ‘This is who I am, and you can find out who i am by knowing what I love.'” Attributed to Rebecca Tushnet, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center. (p.159)

“Physical limitations on how we have organized information have not only limited our vision, they have also given the people who control the organization of information more power than than those who create the information. Editors are more powerful than reporters, and communication syndicates are more powerful than editors because they get to decide what to bring to the surface and what to ignore.(p.89)

“Facts are that about which we no longer argue.” (p.214)

“A span of expertise is about as long as a shelf in a library.” (p.205)

Political conventions

Posted on July 26, 2004 by Steve Mays

David Weinberger sums it up nicely: “The Convention folks think their job is to script an event for the news media, and the news media don’t want to cover an event that’s been scripted.”

“Americans face forward”

Posted on May 8, 2004 by Steve Mays

“The greatest country in history. We can do so much. We will do so much. This country was, after all, founded to move into the future, not to hold onto the habits and ideas of the past. For most countries, if you ask them what they are, what’s unique and defining about them, they’ll point to their past. Not us. Americans have always pointed to the future. If you want to understand us, look at what we’re going to do. Americans face forward.”

A speech that David Weinberger wrote but never gave.

“In the 21st century, the secret police will have corporate IDs”

Posted on May 5, 2004 by Steve Mays

Source: Dr. David Weinberger

“Our longing for the Web

Posted on January 23, 2004 by Steve Mays

“Our longing for the Web is rooted in the deep resentment we feel toward being managed.” — David Weinberger, The Cluetrain Manifesto. I’m not sure why this feels so true but it does. I’m rereading Cluetrain and find it more…relevant than the first time. You’re going to have to wade through more quotes (that I might have posted the first time).

“World of Ends: What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else”

Posted on January 8, 2004 by Steve Mays

There are mistakes and there are mistakes.

Some mistakes we learn from. For example: Thinking that selling toys for pets on the Web is a great way to get rich. We’re not going to do that again.

Other mistakes we insist on making over and over. For example, thinking that:

…the Web, like television, is a way to hold eyeballs still while advertisers spray them with messages.

…the Net is something that telcos and cable companies should filter, control and otherwise “improve.”

… it’s a bad thing for users to communicate between different kinds of instant messaging systems on the Net.

…the Net suffers from a lack of regulation to protect industries that feel threatened by it.

–Doc Searls and David Weinberger

David Weinberger on Kill Bill

Posted on October 13, 2003 by Steve Mays

“Tarantino’s love of movies is infectious. But what he loves about them isn’t their literary capabilities, the way they can show us people and events changing each other, and the rest of that important yada. No, QT loves their syntax, their rhetoric. And that’s what Kill Bill is great at: a samurai sword being re-holstered, a nod that launches an attack. It’s like a “That’s Entertainment” that shows not the greatest tap dance sequences in the history of movies but the greatest gestures.”

Corporate blogs

Posted on June 16, 2003 by Steve Mays

From an article by Hiawatha Bray in the Business Section (The Boston Globe) on the Weblogs Business Strategy conference last week:

“Consider: Every business needs to know what its employees know. Companies are crammed with experts on various topics whose knowledge goes to waste — because nobody knows what they know. Now give these workers an internal corporate blog, and encourage them to use it. Let them natter away on every topic that intrigues them. Harvest and index the results. You’ve mapped your workers’ brains. The company’s hidden experts will cheerfully reveal themselves, and the firm’s institutional memory gets an upgrade.” [By way of JOHO]

Doc Searls, David Weinberger: Net fundamentals.

Posted on March 7, 2003 by Steve Mays

“When we look at utility poles, we see networks as wires. And we see those wires as parts of systems: The phone system, the electric power system, the cable TV system. When we listen to radio or watch TV, we’re told during every break that networks are sources of programming being beamed through the air or through cables. But the Internet is different. It isn’t wiring. It isn’t a system. And it isn’t a source of programming.”

1. The Internet isn’t complicated
2. The Internet isn’t a thing. It’s an agreement.
3. The Internet is stupid.
4. Adding value to the Internet lowers its value.
5. All the Internet’s value grows on its edges.
6. Money moves to the suburbs.
7. The end of the world? Nah, the world of ends.
8. The Internets three virtues:
– a. No one owns it
– b. Everyone can use it
– c. Anyone can improve it
9. If the Internet is so simple, why have so many been so boneheaded about it?
10. Some mistakes we can stop making already

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“We read for the pleasure of thinking another person’s thoughts.” — Sam Harris

Tag Archives: David Weinberger