Chapter One- The Cluetrain Manifesto

So I quit my job last Friday just before getting on a plane and starting to read this first chapter. As the pages went by, I felt more and more confident about my decision to leave the company I was working for. In the chapter, Christopher Locke describes companies that like to work in a hierarchical setting in relation to everything including the company's intranet. I was working for a company such as this one. My boss did not trust me to come up with my own ideas or think for myself in any way because she felt it would jepordize her authority.As Locke descrtibes how these companies will soon go under if they do not get with the program of trusting their employees and letting them contribute to the company as a whole, this is the same for the company that I just left. My boss, like many of the CIOs described in the chapter was for "straight laced traditional business" instead of the rock and roll, improvisational business and in the end this will probably be the company's downfall. The company I worked for was a jewelry company and some of the pieces can be seen at Vivre. My boss, like many of the ones described in the article, expected to be able to tell people anything and expect them to believe it, and want to buy our product imediately. The only problem with this is what was talked about in the chapter about how people simply are not going to go for that anymore. People now want to know the facts about what they are spending their hard earned money on not what the company wants them to know. If a consumer can't find something at a certain company, he or she will go someplace else. The people who created the internet wanted it to be a place where people could get the facts. They were not interested in some worker being held under a higher power's thumb being told what to say and when to say it. These peope were free-thinkers and from what Locke has to say, if a company is going to survive in the coming years, they are going to have to let loose and let their employees do the same.

What people need to realize is that the Net isn't just another way to market and sell things. It is not an extension of the television. It is an entity unto itself. Locke describes how Yahoo started out as just another part of the masterpiece but now that it has gained power, it seems to be aligning itself with the like of Disney and K-Mart. The advertising ideas that thes e companies are trying to use the Net for are pase and the Net is not about old ideas. Instead the uses for the Net are far more forward thinking than anything these large companies have forseen. Jon Dean thinks that the change that I'm speaking about is coming around alot slower than everyone would like but nevertheless, change is on its way. Anthony's post talks mostly about how Locke describes the internet as a tool for entertainment rather than communication, it's original use. There are many people who agree with this view Douglas Rushkoff's book Coercion describes this in great detail. My own oppinion is that the internet is an amazing tool for communcation, but I cannot deny using it for entertainment purposes, in a way they go hand in hand.