Reboot8: the best blogging is provisional, and the "mobile Internet" does not exist

Final speeches at Reboot8 in Copenhagen (see also previous 4 posts). Doc Searls (blogger and co-author of the "Cluetrain Manifesto" - the book that six years ago introduced the notion that "markets are conversations", and a bloggers bible of sorts) talks about "Markets 2.0". Running notes:
- "When we said that markets are conversations, what we meant was that markets were real places where people gathered to do business and make culture. And the feedback we got was: yes, markets are conversations, but they are also relationships. Markets are both transactions, conversations and relationships. The real killer app is relationships".
- Traditional search engines (Google, Yahoo) hunt for relatively static stuff, for "sites" that are "designed" and "built" at "addresses", while the "live web" (blogs etc) is where conversations and relationships happen
- Yahoo's "news search" also searches for blogs, but displays them on a separate box, and Google makes a distinction between web search and blog search, "for some reasons to Google they are two different things"; Technorati is "close to live".
- The live web is branching off the static web.
- Search engines send out bots to crawl and index billions; Technorati listens to "pings" - to "messages" sent by updated blogs - it responds only to signs of life.
- The static web is about spaces and places; the live web is about time and people.
- The static web is a haystack; the live web is organized chronologically.
- The best blogging is provisional: it's not finished nor final (industrial publishers create finished work)
- The best blogging is about rolling snowballs (your oll out an idea, others add to it, and keep it rolling)
- There is a great unbundling underway
- The big trend isn't more content: it's consumers becoming producers
- There is a new economy coming together around the "live web". It's the same as the old economy, only networked. It originates with those that relate and converse, not only with those who transact.
- The live web will help drive the "intention economy" (as opposed to the "attention economy"): the intention in the marketplace is what you get when the consumer's mind is already made up. the intention economy has inadequate infrastructure for now - we know very little about it. Why? Because we still think that a free market is a choice between silos.

Chris Heathcote is a designer at Nokia (blog) and talks about Mobile 2.0. Running notes:
- When we are asked about barriers to using the mobile Internet, we generally give one of these four answers: small display size, limited device speed/computing capability, cumbersome text entry ("but if it's so difficult, where do the 1000 billion SMS messages sent in 2005 come from?"), and insufficient network speed. These are not barriers.
- The real barriers are: transporting data wirelessly costs a lot of money ("flat pricing may partially solve this problem"), battery life is limited (color screen, playing music etc use serious power), the "2 hours problem" ("in the Western world we are always less than 2 hours away from a computer, so we put off doing stuff because we can wait 2 hours for it"), and smart networks ("we want high speed, always on, and don't want anyone interfering with our data").
- The phone is good enough to use the same Internet and read the same information. A separate "mobile Internet" does not exist.
- I don't get my best ideas sitting in front of my computer, I get them when I'm out and about. If I have a mobile connection, I can action them immediately. That's where mobile is really useful.
- Mobile is social. Many people have tried to push the mobile stuff using the "when I'm waiting for a bus" scenario (mobile applications and content as interstitials in daily life), but mobile is social, and what's interesting is to take the Internet and make it social.
- Push & pull: the Internet is two-ways, we don't just need smart clients, we need also mobile servers (he shows a mobile implementation of the open-source Apache server that shadows the phone, giving access to contact, messages and other data, and letting the user command for example the phone to take a picture or to function as a remote webcam).

[tags: reboot8 cluetrain live web mobile2]

Comments

[vac]

quote: "The live web is branching off the static web"

the whole direction of this discussion is fundametally flawed. the live web is NOT the answer to everything. it is only marketed that way. there is only one human-made mediascape (from cave paintings to mobile blogging and beyond) and it is continuous. example: if a forum attendging crowd wants to get serious about a topic it will set up a wiki, write a journal paper or organize a picnic or whatever. the so called live web is definitely only part of the overall world of human interaction, transaction, creation, and do forth.

the fundamental question is time. how do humans going to live with the fact that time is more or less vanishing as a factor in the process of creation and production?

[Doc Searls]

Hmm... I'm the one who brought up the Live Web subject, and I don't recall saying it was the answer to everything. Or to anything. Or even an answer. Only that there seems to be a conceptual difference between static and live ways of conceiving the Web. And that I think the difference is meaningful.

By the way, visuals from my talk are now up here:

http://www.searls.com/doc/2006reboot8/

[vac]

@doc searls

first of all I do find your talk entertaining and "thought provoking" as they say on Am...n.

Now, excuse me but a talk that (though supposedly ironically) advertises
quote:
"Beyond Capitalism,
Marxism,
Taylorism,
McLuhanism
and even
Cluetrainism" endquote

and then offers nothing more than the observation that the temporal dimension is relevant to all forms of web content / context / device (as it is obviously to all forms of media)plus the "speed layer" picture / metaphor from the longnow.org crowd has to be prepared for (harsh) outbursts of criticsm.

Every attempt at short-circuiting tid bits from (western) cultural studies with your geek speak is vulnerable to criticsm and has been for at least 20 years now.

At least a link between the spatial domain (Engestroem's talk) and the temporal dimension would have broadened the picture a bit.

Oh and why don't you wake up? In a world where corporations are eager to turn the water supply of entire countries into private property there is more to be said and done than an appeal to industry saying "be good to the people, do no evil, care for civilzation etc...rofl

[vac]

Listen to Jaron Lanier if you dear

http://edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier06/lanier06_index.html

[Marco Faré]

Thank you Bruno for this series on reboot8.
Among others things, I found interesting what Doc Searls says about Google and Technorati:

- ...Google makes a distinction between web search and blog search, "for some reasons to Google they are two different things"); Technorati is "close to live".
- The live web is branching off the static web.

It's not a contradiction? Live and static web should be treated in different ways, and Google is doing it wrong?

[ac]

live is better than static?
active is better than passive?
to listen is better than to talk?
to write is better than to read?
...

here is Nick Carr in a short piece on the growing number of False Dichotomies
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/06/in_praise_of_st.php