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

[Doc Searls < >]

> On Mar 5, 2015, at 10:43 PM, Johannes Ernst 
> <
 >
>  wrote:
> 
> 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.

At newspapers it's customary for headlines to be written by somebody other 
than the reporter. Even though Charles is probably the author of the headline 
in this case, I kinda see it the same way. He needed a headline, so he made 
one up. Cluetrain is part of the vernacular, so he just used it without 
meaning anything special about it.

> 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.

Could be. Certainly the Big Problems are even bigger than they look. 

But I also believe VRM awaits the inventions that mother necessity. We'll get 
them, I'm sure. In fact, I'm betting they will come from people and projects 
on this list. :-)

Doc

> 
> In thoughts,
> 
> 
> 
> Johannes.
>