[projectvrm] Charles Stross's "different cluetrain" (Are we not thinking big enough?)

[Johannes Ernst < >]

I was puzzled about “A different cluetrain”, by sci-fi author Charles Stross. 
People on this list seemed puzzled, too.

He uses “cluetrain” in the title, and then talks about something else. 
Politics. Capitalism. International relations. Student loans. Not a word 
about customers or marketing and the topics that the Cluetrain Manifesto is 
about.

I’m an avid reader of his novels and can attest that he’s a smart and 
informed guy, and has been plugged into tech for a long time. This is no 
accident. I think he’s trying to tell us something. It occurred to me:

What if he isn’t talking about something else? What if what he’s writing 
about is actually the same subject as the subject of the Cluetrain Manifesto 
— except that we haven’t realized or acknowledged it, perhaps because that 
would make the subject so much bigger and much scarier?

For example, is it possible that VRM the way we discuss it is not actually 
viable today in a large scale given, say, the regulatory capture architecture 
that capitalism has morphed into? Or …?

What if we think the trillion-dollar problem we keep discussing is merely the 
foot of the elephant, which cannot be stopped from trampling the world until 
we acknowledge there’s a whole elephant attached to that foot, and come up 
with a plan to redirect the entire elephant?

Certainly it’s beginning to look like that to me.

In thoughts,



Johannes.