All around I see people building new tools for Web 2.0. I think that when we think "Tool" we think doing to and hence not the new world of self expression or participation that is emerging. I am not alone in thinking that the new is all about creating a space and not a tool.
Here is Jeff Jarvis commenting yesterday on how we saw this idea in our Report for NPR:
They want to create a ” ‘trusted space’ for listeners to visit and have a hand in creating.” Emphasis mine. I think that’s important and if they mean it, a powerful key to the future of public media.
They admit they’re not sure what it is.
Their blueprint document says: “We have an opportunity to embrace, promote and encourage connections among the audience around shared civic goals based on our mission. To accomplish this, we will need to curate content and provide tools that enable individuals to engage in making the world a better place.”
NPR exec Dana Davis Rehm confesses: “We don’t know all the characteristics of a trusted space. It’s more of an ideal we’re trying to achieve.”
I’d think of it this way: Dave Winer has complained that when he gives money to NPR, he loses any control over it, any voice in at least suggesting how it is used. I think that people willl not only want that voice and some measure of control but also will be willing to contribute their own creation to a “trusted space” network.
If NPR can enable that to happen, it’s big. And that is the real question at hand: What is the role of public media in an era of public control of media? How can the public be more involved in the network (and thus support it more)? And how can the network point to and support the good work of the public?"
Here is Doc Searls this week on Marketing:
"The Matrix is a metaphor for marketing In his post about the movie Brazil, Nicholas Petreley says some very kind things about my upcoming (October) Linux For Suits column, calling it "a must-read for anyone who cares about free software and free speech".
Without giving too much away, here's the case it makes:
* Just as "The matrix" was a virtual world manufactured by machines to occupy the minds of humans whose only real purpose was to serve as living batteries, silo'd markets do the same for the minds of real humans in the real world.
* We -- even many of us in the free software and open source worlds -- tend to think "free market" means "your choice of silo", and that it is both natural and okay for whole markets to be controlled by just a few vendors, each of which attract and hold customers in closed habitats maintained by customer relationship management (CRM) systems that have more in common with zookeepers' manuals than with anything a free human being would call a "relationship".
* This is why far too much of what we call "marketing" is about capturing and holding customers, rather than "finding and satisfying customer needs" or other ideals taught in marketing classes.
We need to start seeing, and understanding, markets as free and open places where, as Neo so correctly put it, "The problem is choice". (My emphasis) Nothing wroing with closed habitats. But they shouldn't be the only choices.
Markets without Marketing | Linux Journal
More later today on why the winners use space
technorati tags:Web2.0, Jeff Jarvis, Doc Searls, Marketing, Matrix, Choice, Particpation, Culture, Culture and Organizations, NPR, Public Radio
