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I'll repeat my point from earlier:

The question: What incentive is there for accuracy rather than popularity in this "experiment"? What system will reward people for being closer to the truth, rather than what the audience wants to hear?

In the environment he's asking the question, "answers" which revolve around stroking the pet projects of the A-listers tend to be rewarded. Answers which are uncomfortable, are, well, uncomfortable.

Seth, this seems to me to be prematurely negative. Besides, how does the term "accuracy" apply here? Feasibility, perhaps. Value, definitely. But accuracy? Your use of that term leads me to think that I haven't communicated, um, accurately...

To try to answer deeply: On what basis do you say I'm *prematurely* negative? That is, what is the *reasonable* "null hypothesis"? If many people have tackled a big problem (Revolution!), and very many of them have made a certain error, and initial indications are that this particular attempt looks very likely to have that error, I think it's a very reasonable comment to point out that error and ask what evidence there is that it's even being addressed. It's informal *inductive* logic.

By "accuracy", rather the popularity, I'm refering to the phenomena in blogs and politics in general that a statement is often judged by how much people like it, rather than whether or not it reflects reality. There's far more reward for effective emotional manipulation than being right.

I'll quote Dave Rogers again:

"So we have folks who happily go about the business of "creating passionate users" (consumers), and people who want to make the commercial activity of consumption into some ersatz form of social interaction by marketing some idyllic fantasy of what "markets" are or supposedly used to be. And now they're selling some illusion of putting the consumer in control through "vendor relationship management." The only "control" the consumer has is the power to say no to consumption, and nobody's talking about that. The vendor doesn't care if you're in "control," as long as you're buying, as long as the cash is flowing from you to them! For God's sake, just don't stop buying! That's called a recession!

At the end of the day, it's all about consumption. Since most of their audience has something to sell, they endorse, subscribe and promote their views, effectively becoming shills to the new hawkers and hucksters, who are selling the practice of consumption.

The relationships we really ought to be "managing" is our relationship to desire, and our relationship to material things. But where's the market for that?"

Seth, I'm happy to accept what you say as a generalization that usually nothing comes of the sort of thing that Zack's proposing, a prediction that nothing is going to come of it, or a warning that it's easy to go wrong doing what Zack proposes. But I don't accept it as a reason not to engage in Zack's proposal that we try to think bigger than we have. It'd be a misuse of inductive logic (I believe it's called "hasty generalization"), and it would stifle radical political change.

As for accuracy, Zack is suggesting that it'd be realistic to expand our notion of what is realistic. So, it's a tough one to apply. You may say that our - or your - current notion of the limits of the real is the one true one, but I don't see how we can decide that until we try Zack's experiment. If his experiment succeeds, then we will have a debate and a disagreement about what is realistic, possible, and accurate. Some group of people - and since we're talking about politics here, it has to be popular among a sizable group to succeed - will think a set of the surfaced ideas are possible and worth working towards. Another - you perhaps, me perhaps - will think those ideas are just silly or undesirable. We will argue about it. That's what the success of Zack's experiment looks like.

You're right that marketers often want to create ersatz social interactions. But the point of Cluetrain wasn't that marketers should go out and turn markets into conversations. It was that (i) markets already are conversations because we humans like to talk about the stuff we buy and use and desire. (ii) Conversation shapes opinion and desire, and thus shapes buying. (And it has more important social effects than that, of course.) Thus (iii) markets-as-conversations give customer some measure of control; I didn't get the "DTC" option with our car because other customers were able to tell me the truth about it, as opposed to what the car dealer and marketing brochures said. (iv) Increase the range and accessibility of the conversation and you increase the amount of control customers have. (I couldn't have found the customer experts before the Net. Now it's dead easy.) So, that's the Cluetrain syllogism, as I understand it.

Does this go asymptotic to total control? Nah. We'll always be in a political struggle with marketers over our desires. You're right (imo) to introduce desire as a primitive here. But, (imo) desire is social: We want things that have social meaning, social uses, and based on social influences. Yes, desires are conversations :) Ironically, you and Dave seem to me to have adopted the reductive marketing viewpoint about "consumers" hook, line and sinker.

Did Seth read the same articles I read? A call for economically egalitarian revolution is not exactly what I'd call A-lister bait.

In fact, I think it's Seth who is, in this case, unusefully obsessed with what A-listers think.

Further, I'm not interested in failures. I'm interested in successes. Most of the great revolutions have had elements of both. I'll happily take the risk of failures as part of the price for the successes.

As to the idea that

The relationships we really ought to be "managing" is our relationship to desire, and our relationship to material things

that strikes me as simple-minded bullshit. We have desire for material things because we live in a material world. What Seth is saying here is profoundly reactionary: Don't demand your share of the pie--go on a diet. Well, fuck that.

The reason to be wary of "try[ing] to think bigger than we have" is that it tends to lead to building castles in the air by people who in real life might not even be able to build a decent beach sand-castle. In fact, I like to think very small (e.g. a while back, I was asking how blogging was going to solve the world's problems if the people involved couldn't even agree on a syndication format).

The problem with thinking big is that it has no reality-check.

"As for accuracy, Zack is suggesting that it'd be realistic to expand our notion of what is realistic." - Now, recursively, how do we determine if this is true, or if it just sounds good? We have the problem immediately. But you're missing the aspect that Zack will get positive attention and approval for saying something which sounds good, and I will not get such approval, and maybe negative attention, for being skeptical about it.

As a another small demonstration, the critique of Cluetrain argues that your point (iv) is simply false, that it doesn't follow from premise (i) because that's over-simplified. That is, it *doesn't* "give customers some measure of control", or "increase the amount of control", because the word "conversation" is being used to divert attention from "emotional manipulation". And so if you start from "markets already are conversations because we humans like to talk about the stuff ...", this is useless, because it's equally true, if not more so, that "markets are emotional manipulation because specialists are hired to lie to facilitate sales". From a logical point of view, in fact, that syllogism is pretty transparently silly. Even on its own terms - markets are much more than talk about the stuff, and the talk about the stuff includes much that shouldn't be termed "conversation", more like "paid lying". Maybe you just increase the range and accessibility of emotional manipulation.

Now, this literally your business, so I don't expect you to agree with me. Which in itself is another example of the insights to be had from thinking small.

adamsj - in case you didn't notice, that supposed "call for economically egalitarian revolution" is being discussed on what is not exactly a Z-list blog. Which might tell you something about just how egalitarian it is.

Yeah, if you press me, I think we're going to get another blogs/Internet/social-networks/data-mining/punditry-will-save-the-world "revolution" (right, right, we haven't seen anything yet, I'm prejudging, I know - that's life, we need heuristics to get us through the day). And I'm a counter-revolutionary ...

"We have desire for material things because we live in a material world."
And a structure which promotes certain trade-offs which are not facts of nature. You've got to at least understand this to have a hope of talking sense.

Seth,

When you say:

Yeah, if you press me, I think we're going to get another blogs/Internet/social-networks/data-mining/punditry-will-save-the-world "revolution"

you have almost zero support in the actual text Zack Exley wrote. This paragraph here comes closest:

I agree with the people in my session who said that the technological revolutions are coming whether we want them or not. Yes: We’re getting an explosion of change no matter what. But here’s the explosion I want: clean technology replaces dirty technology; technology turns the matter of making a living into an afterthought for everyone in the world; freed from drudgery, humanity ploughs its effort into education, culture and just having a damn good time; our great challenge becomes simply living well (which we will find is not as easy as it sounds).

Even that paragraph, though, is governed by what I take to be the central paragraph of the first piece:

Yes, capitalism was made possible by technological innovations. But it took organized political action — a revolution — to actually give it birth.

He's clearly and explicitly saying that organized political action is more important than technology.

Exley is speaking directly to you, Seth, whether you know it or not, in this paragraph here:

Why isn’t that a realistic vision? If we formed a worldwide movement to bring that into being, wouldn’t we stand a chance of succeeding? History says, “Yes.” Humanity has pulled off improvements on that scale over and over. But the current zeitgeist says, “No way.” We been overcome by a lack of confidence — one that’s shared pretty much the world over.

(I'd go further and say it's not a simple lack of confidence, but a planned assault on the very idea of directed social change by rightist ideologues, but that's me, not him, so if you want to argue that point, argue it with me.)

As for

in case you didn't notice, that supposed "call for economically egalitarian revolution" is being discussed on what is not exactly a Z-list blog. Which might tell you something about just how egalitarian it is

well, it's just silly to judge an idea by one person who discusses it. Further, according to Technorati, no one, from A to Z and around Aleph back to Omega, is linking to either of the two pieces Exley has posted so far.

In my dotage, I'm more and more impressed with Marx's idea that you best understand the world by attempting to change it. In that light, your opposition to thinking big about change ensures that you'll have a limited understanding of the world.

Quick correction: On searching Technorati via the zack_exley tag, I see there are a handful of links to his posts, none of which are from any blog which I've ever heard of, other than this one right here.

Also, let me copyedit a sentence for increased clarity and reduced ambiguity:

(I'd go further and say it's not a simple lack of confidence, but a planned assault by rightist ideologues on the very idea of directed social change, but that's me, not him, so if you want to argue that point, argue it with me.)

The italicized phrase was moved.

adamsj: One person can be an indicator. It's not a perfect inference, but it is useful probablistic information. In a way, I respect David's skill and judgment.

Regarding "best understand the world by attempting to change it.", very few of us have the power and influence to try to make BIG changes. This is a simple fact (we can strive to be part of big changes, real revolutions, but as a simple matter of mathematics, we can't all make big changes in the world). We can try to make small changes, and see how that goes. So in fact, I might get a better understanding of the world by thinking small, because that allows for much more testing of whether or not some idea works.

Note, after history has happened, it's trivial to go back and find the Big Thinker who got it right. But beforehand, it's not so clear, since there are plenty of Big Thinkers who contradict each other (remember the "End Of History" from a few years ago?).

Seth, I'll address just one of the points you raise, just by way of Conversation Management, a term I hope never catches on.

So, you seem to think that Cluetrain says that markets are nothing but conversations. That's not what I believe. Of course markets are manipulation, persuasion, trickery, honesty, economic exchange, and more. But they are _also_ conversations. My ability to get honest info from another customer about the DTC option of my car doesn't immunize me from the auto manufacturer's ads. (I've regretted the cluetrain thesis about us being immune to ads just about from the moment it went up, and have said so before.) Market conversations _help_ us avoid _some_ of the market knavery, and if you don't think so, then don't let me catch you asking someone "How do you like those shoes?" :)

Well, the slogan is "markets are conversations" - NOT "conversations are part of markets". And certainly the presentations seems to focus almost exclusively on that aspect, with very little attention to "manipulation, persuasion, trickery, honesty, economic exchange, and more". OF COURSE you know better, when pressed. But the techniques of emotional manipulation allow for many layers of knowledge.

"Market conversations _help_ us avoid _some_ of the market knavery," - As a trivial statement, that's true. The critique of Cluetrain is whether, overall, the effects of some change is to help knavery or not. That is, there's no magic that whatever increases the opportunity for honest conversation, doesn't also increase the opportunity for dishonest manipulation. In fact, there's plenty of reasons to think otherwise - see buzz marketing, Pay-Per-Post, etc on the one hand, and the discussion about "influencers" on the other.

But in terms of thinking small, note again for the above, there's very little interest in refining ways to find out what's accurate, and an overwhelming sales-pitch to appeal to people's emotions.

Seth, does it really come down to your thinking that we cluetrain guys meant "markets are only conversations and nothing else"? You're right: "markets are conversations" is a slogan. You're not supposed to take slogans as full and nuanced expressions...especially when they're embedded in a book that elaborates on the slogan. In fact, the slogan obviously only is interesting in a context where markets are not just conversations. The book denounces the knavery of markets as they exist. The marketing chapter in the book does, as I recall, contrast existing practices with the rising influence of conversational marketing. So, I am surprised you act as if the slogan expresses the entirety of the book's discussion of markets.

Of course you're right that the market's increased ability to talk amongst itself raises opportunities for more knavery. So? Is your point that therefore nothing has changed and nothing has gotten better for customers? Frankly, that seems to me to be an untenable position. I only have to look at my own ways of buying to see that you're wrong about this. I can't quantify it, and it is not evenly distributed among Net users, and there are still manipulators and frauds, but every day I experience the benefits of being able to connect with customers and learn from them as a way to fend off (some of) the tricks of marketers. Are you seriously contending that the growth of discussion boards, customer reviews, customer Web sites, blogs, etc., have made NO difference in fighting the manipulative attempts of marketers?

As for your final paragraph: That's not an evidence-based observation. And it seems to me to be wrong. "There's very little interest in refining ways to find out what's accurate"? Really? I read much of the history of the development of the Web (at the apps and sites level, not lower down the stack) as exactly an evolution of ways to think together, getting more and more accurate and complete information. Take any segment you want, from music to travel, and over the past ten years there have been incredible, mind-blowing, inconceivable advances in how we inform one another. Do you write all of them off because bad marketing is still common?

Finally, it may well turn out that nothing comes of Zack's request. No one takes him up on it, or they do and it's all crap. Maybe the A-Listers will simply try to out-do one another in coming up with vacuous, crowd-pleasing ideas. So what? There's still a small chance someone will come up with a big idea that matters. If not, what will we have lost?

I'll throw this in. In 1950, the magazine Consumer Reports was considered to be sufficiently subversive to be one of the pretexts on which a librarian, Ruth Brown, in Bartlesville, Oklahoma was fired after thiry years on the job. (It was a pretext, by the way. The real reason was that she and two black women [Brown was white] had attempted to integrate a lunch counter.)

Well, if you ask, it comes down to me thinking that Cluetrainers *sell* "markets are only conversations", and nothing else.

There's a game I call "A-lister wins", which runs like this:

1) A-lister makes statements very amenable to simplistic view, gives a long sales-pitch, goes on at great length hyping the slogan in an evangelical manner.
2) Critics rebut simplistic view.
3) A-lister says, no, I didn't really mean something so simple, that's a straw man, I meant (usually something trivial).
4) Critics now have a problem - discussion can become a long philosophical wrangle, and the A-lister can always just write a personal attack on the critics, who are usually two or three orders of magnitude less powerful.
5) "A-lister wins"

I haven't yet found a good strategy for dealing with this.

Regarding "So? Is your point that therefore nothing has changed and nothing has gotten better for customers? Frankly, that seems to me to be an untenable position."

Quite simply - 1) Yes. 2) Why?

The *critique* of Cluetrain, in a nutshell, is that your argument, which you've merely repeated, is probably *wrong*, and at the very best, *unproven*. It has no EVIDENCE for it being right. It's based on an appeal to emotion.

"Are you seriously contending that the growth of discussion boards, customer reviews, customer Web sites, blogs, etc., have made NO difference in fighting the manipulative attempts of marketers?"

YES. Because every item there has its own opportunities for gaming and manipulation. And so it cannot blithely be assumed that there is improvement. Moreover, the fact that the bogosphere is such a haven for partisan hacks and marketers, makes a pretty good case that, in terms of accuracy, it's *worse* that what it's replaced (which, I have to anti-straw man, is not an argument that blogs are always wrong and non-blogs are always right - it's a potential statement about overall result, and in absolute terms, both past and present are arguably pretty miserable).

"There's very little interest in refining ways to find out what's accurate"? Really?

How much interest are you manifesting in trying to determine whether or not what you believe is *true*? That is, people can sincerely believe many things that simply aren't right. Or because they want to believe it. You have a hypothesis - roughly, growth in interconnection fights manipulation. There is a counter-hypothesis - growth in interconnection simply provides corresponding new opportunities for manipulation. Which one is correct? How do you know?

And why are Z-listers expected never to publicly comment on the obvious clubbiness of who gets heard even for the most recycled banality, because the club-member might, just might, have some Deep Insight?

Thanks, Seth. That is clarifying.

It's certainly true that Cluetrain argues for the conversational side of markets. But it also implicitly and explicitly acknowledges the non-conversational side, even as it remains optimistic about the balance.

But cluetrain does not reduce to a three-word slogan. (I'm not sure at this point if that's what you're saying). As evidence of that I'd point to the acres of real estate the authors have stained with ink over the past six years.

If your objection is to the over-simplification of the three-word slogan, well, I actually see nothing wrong with that. It's part of how we all (?) talk and how we make sense of things. If a person speaks only in bumperstickers, then we have a problem. But I don't think that's what you're criticizing me for. (If not, let me know.)

As for your comment that Cluetrain is about selling an idea, I think there's truth in that. People do tend to stick with ideas they've argued for in public. It's not a good thing, but, almost all of us find it embarrassing to change our minds in public. And, ideas serve as filters, so markets start looking more like conversations once you've made a big deal about that. Last but certainly not least, I have made money promulgating the idea, just as I hope to make money promulgating the idea that everything is miscellaneous. All of these factors corrupt thought and, well, conversation. They also have a certain inevitability, although we can do better or worse jobs struggling against them.

Nevertheless, believing an idea to be right is also in the mix of reasons why we sometimes stick with it. I do believe what I say about the conversational nature of marketing. (I also agree, along with you, that every characteristic the cluetrainers point to is also an opportunity for liars and crooks.)

Are my beliefs evidence-based? I am not a facts 'n' data writer or thinker. I wish I were. It's a huge weakness. I instead usually am trying to make sense of my experience and what I see of others'. If a reader's own experience doesn't accord, or if she has reliable evidence to the contrary, then what I write is without value for that reader. Worse, what I write does damage by spreading falsehoods. This is a terrible failing of mine. It means, for example, that what I write is clarifying at best for a diminishing group of people like me, while the on-line population of people unlike me - not middle-aged, not middle-class, not American, not English-speaking, not male, not white, not over-educated, etc. etc. - grows rapidly...unless, occasionally what I'm noticing holds across those divides.

So, how do I know which of the two hypotheses you set out so clearly is true? With only the weakest of evidence: My experience and the observations guided by that experience. Of course I could be deeply wrong, as you point out. If there's quantifiable evidence supporting either of the hypotheses, I'd love to see it. It might even change my mind.

Finally, you are always welcome to keep me - a clubby B or C Lister - in line.