This is part 3 in a blog arc propagated by Jim Sterne sending me a link to a nine year old article by Chris Locke, Faster Horses!. Mr. Locke was kind enough to let me quote from his article in my blog as one side of a conversation, just to see if things really have changed. Part 1 had Mr. Locke waking up in the middle of the night and asking me some questions.
Part 2 went into why we dream what we dream and what would have to happen for someone to dream about ecommerce.
To make things a little easier to read, Mr. Locke's article will be in standard text, my responses in italics.
A reader recently wrote to complain about EGR, not an infrequent occurrence by the way.
I don't get complaints on my blog. Unless you count "Could you explain more about...".
She basically said my writing was too abstract,
That I get. I'm working to be less so. Time will tell.
...though she didn't use that word. She said it more by way of description. What she liked hearing about was what somebody had done -- maybe gone to the zoo and seen an interesting new kind of animal (my example, not hers) -- what he or she said to friends, and what they said back. You know, like real life.
You mean as in 'case studies'?
I wrote back saying yes, I understood (and I really do), but my life is not like that. What I do all day and night is stare into the one good eye of this cyclopean monster we call the Internet. I earn my living this way.
Ah. Here our lives are very different. I don't spend much of my day actually looking at the internet per se. I documented this in Took some time off, time to catch up.
And it's not just the staring I get paid for, either. You think it's easy maintaining the fiction that you're a guru, a pundit, someone who knows more about The Medium than your average stumblebum on the street?
Hmm...I generally make it a point to let people know I don't consider myself an expert...on much of anything.
No way. I have to constantly think up new analogies, metaphors, emergent trends, shit like that. And make no mistake, this is hard f?cking work.
Agreed.
Especially when you're just pulling it out of your hat.
That makes me smile. I was being interviewed recently and the subject was viral campaigns. The interviewer said it sounded like I was making things up as I went. Well, I was making up the metaphors as I went and it wasn't easy compressing 2+ years of research into a ten second soundbyte.
But perhaps that reader was right. Perhaps a more interactive human exchange would better convey my point. So OK, I have this big meeting with a large and very well heeled corporation. I am thinking they can feed me for a long time. They, in turn, are thinking I plan to cheat them out of a large sum of money. In other words, your usual prospect meeting.
The confrontational model? Not my style.
(more to follow...)
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Links for this post:
- Chris Locke's Faster Horses!
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