David Weinberger’s was even better. David – of Cluetrain fame and a Harvard Berkman Center fellow, if you’re not familiar with him – gave a great talk called “The Information Revolution that Wasn’t and the One that Will Be.” Among other topics, he looked at the way that things like metadata and blogs are impacting not only our day-to-day life, but the way businesses interact with their customers. Absent was the “blogs will change the world” rhetoric you might have expected given the title; the focus instead was on real world examples.
In discussing the potential puchases of a washer/dryer from Sears, for example, he discussed the paradoxical circumstance we all find ourselves in these days, when some anonymous reviewer named Jim carries more credibility and is considered more authoritative about a company’s products than the company itself. The primary differentiation he called out was that of facts (i.e. the physical dimensions of a washer, on which Jim is not credible, while Sears is) vs knowledge (i.e. how does the machine handle multiple queen size sheets, where Jim is credible and Sears isn’t). Facts, he argued, would be commoditized, while knowledge would not. It reminded me of Adam Bosworth’s comments on the subject of knowledge here:
My mother never complains that she needs a better client for Amazon. Instead, her interest is in better community tools, better book lists, easier ways to see the book lists, more trust in the reviewers, librarian discussions since she is a librarian, and so on. (link)
Of all the great content, however, the most important point he made for me was in discussing blogs. Normally, I’m averse to talking about blogs as an entity in and of themselves, because I find the discussions rather tiresome and lacking in objective thinking. Traditional media outlets and others downplay blogs’ importance, mainly out of concern to the impact it will have on their business. At the same time, over-zealous bloggers make the technology out to be a panacea for a variety of political, social and technical ills – and are subsequently skewered by Andrew Orlowski.
Weinberger, however, contended that the importance of blogs is their persistence. Unlike email or IM, blogs are not ephemeral, and the information collects to form a history. Over time, he said, they begin to stand for who we are. That is a notion I very much subscribe to. That’s one of the reasons I took such an exception to Charlene Li’s blogging code. I said it differently the other day [1], but same principle.
In answering the traditional media criticims of blogs (that the readerships are measured in the single, double or triple digits typically), he argued also the traditional metric for publishing success – readership – shouldn’t apply here. The importance of blogs is that 5 million people are publishing their thoughts on anything. He contended that was a profound change, and would have profound effects. It may not change the world, but it could certainly change the way some companies do business. I agree.
Good session, and thanks to MESDA for putting it together.
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[1] I believe that blogs will end up looking a lot like the people who author them, and will vary similarly. (link)
