This debate about Web3 is a lot of fun. What is the best way to call out one of the two major characters? Now that he is free of Wall Street’s hound dogging adult oversight of Twitter, Jack Dorsey has an unrestricted hall pass, which he is exploiting for some covert reason.
I do not know him well, but I have always admired his unconventional approach to profound truths he does not have time. Marc Andreessen is a well-known entrepreneur. I am not sure who he is, but I am trying to avoid being blocked by him.
Today, I listened to a Kara Swisher Twitter Space, where she has barred for some reason. She is quickly becoming my favorite media figure since she asks all of my questions in a format (live audio) where I will never be called on stage. As a result, I think her spaces are wonderful validation of the new format since the divisions between host, speaker, and listener are unimportant while she is there.
People in our age group are falling like flies, as Doc Searls points out. We talked about Kim Cameron of the Identity Gang a few weeks ago, and this week we are talking about Chris Locke of Cluetrain fame. The recording is available on Clubhouse, and the link is included in the newsletter. He dubbed Rageboy for all the right reasons, as you will hear, an original voice that emerged as the Internet provided a voice to everybody who turned up.
Doc claims that he almost developed Cluetrain on the backs of the previous generation of rageboys, including Kurt Vonnegut and, of course, Hunter S. Thompson. Locke linked Doc, David Weinberger, and a technologist, Rick Levine, who constructed the website that transformed into the business book, in the same way, that John Lennon brought Paul in, Paul got George in, and George brought Ringo. The last advertisement reminds me of the man in Monty Python who created all of the weird cartoons that linked the group’s tissues together.
Doc and the Cluetrain claimed that markets are dialogues, and many people thought they grasped the basic note, which Doc now refers to as the promise of independence. The discussion around Web3 now feels momentous and epoch changing, but the previous several years of Trumpism and the epidemic have made us warier of technology’s effect. My educated view is that both Jack and Marc represent a dialogue in which both parties are correct, but the media is looking for a fight and an afterparty rope line. I do not hear as much agreement as I do the debate between John and Paul: Getting better all the time, Cannot get much worse.
As the early Internet’s fighters fade from view, I recall the euphoria of that period. The fights were about things like controlling our own data, being able to move it from platform to platform, and turning the social media moment into something we could use in the larger media world.
The influencer position arose because of this upsurge, and the endorsement model served as its economic engine. It always seemed like a record deal in the 1970s and 1980s: you gathered enough money to pay a recording session and then sold it to a label. Success came in the form of radio airplay and the prospect of a contract for greater recording and touring backing.
