chapter seven

the following is the complete first chapter of

The Cluetrain Manifesto:
The End of Business as Usual

Highlighted by eyalnow

People by the millions are discovering how to negotiate, cooperate, collaborate -- to create, to explore, to enjoy themselves.

Highlighted by eyalnow

We will strive to listen in new ways -- to the voices of
quiet anguish, to voices that speak without words, the voices
of the heart, to the injured voices, and the anxious voices,
and the voices that have despaired of being heard.

Richard M. Nixon, first inaugural address, 1969

Highlighted by eyalnow

There never was any grand plan on the Internet, and there isn't one today. The Net is just the Net. But it has provided an extraordinarily efficient means of communication to people so long ignored, so long invisible, that they're only now figuring out what to do with it. Funny thing: lawless, planless, management-free, they're figuring out what to do with the Internet much faster than government agencies, academic institutions, media conglomerates, and Fortune-class corporations.

Highlighted by eyalnow

So what is the Net really good for? Besides chatting, that is. Well, there's the small matter of coordinating distribution.

Highlighted by eyalnow

One thing the Net is good for is organizing markets. Especially if you're invisible and powerless, ignorant of how things are supposed to work, ignorant of business-as-usual. Especially if you're intent on end-running the empire.

Highlighted by eyalnow

The Demonic Paradox

Although a system may cease to exist in the legal sense or
as a structure of power, its values (or anti-values), its
philosophy, its teachings remain in us. They rule our
thinking, our conduct, our attitude to others. The
situation is a demonic paradox: we have toppled the system
but we still carry its genes.

Ryszard Kapuscinski, Polish journalist, 1991

Highlighted by eyalnow

And next time you wonder what you're allowed to say at work, online, downtown at the public library, just say whatever the hell you feel like saying. Anyone asks you, tell 'em it's OK. Tell 'em you read about it in a book.

Highlighted by eyalnow

How do you speak in a human voice? First, you get a life. And corporations just can't do that. Corporations are like Pinocchio. Or Frankenstein. Their noses grow longer at the oddest moments, or they start breaking things for no good reason. They want to be human, but gosh, they're not. They want the Formula for Life -- but they want it so they can institutionalize it. The problem, of course, is that life is anti-formulaic, anti-institutional. The most fundamental quality of life is something the corporation can never capture, never possess. Life can't be shrink-wrapped, caged, dissected, analyzed, or owned. Life is free.

Highlighted by eyalnow

But if you think of yourself as a company, you've got much bigger worries. We strongly suggest you repeat the following mantra as often as possible until you feel better: "I am not a company. I am a human being."

Highlighted by eyalnow

Imagine a world where everyone was constantly learning, a world where what you wondered was more interesting than what you knew, and curiosity counted for more than certain knowledge. Imagine a world where what you gave away was more valuable than what you held back, where joy was not a dirty word, where play was not forbidden after your eleventh birthday. Imagine a world in which the business of business was to imagine worlds people might actually want to live in someday. Imagine a world created by the people, for the people not perishing from the earth forever.

Yeah. Imagine that.

Highlighted by eyalnow