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

[Identity Coach < >]

I wonder if this isn't a call to the community--and an open opportunity.
We've been talking lately about scaling, but if we aren't an established
ecosystem (an arguable point to be sure), "scaling" may not be relevant.
Most of us operate from a position of deep relevancy and urgency, but
not (I think) market necessity. The conversation is still one-sided.

It doesn't matter who or why the headline. I'm reading it as a call to
action, from an ecosystem that has need and yet is closed, to an
ecosystem that has promise and is also closed. Kinda like the dialog
between our politcal parties: using the same words but carrying
different meanings with each word. There's a need for two things:
translation and dependent connection/necessity for each other.

I wonder if we are experiencing a momentary lack of vision.

  j.

On 3/5/15 7:58 PM, Doc Searls wrote:
>> 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.
>>