Week 5 Reading

"Markets are Conversations" from The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual by Levine, Locke, Searls & Weinberger makes a good point about the effectiveness and worth of actual people doing the work. The article says, "They (corporations) will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf." Companies can be very sterile and monotonous without real people. The article continues, "Most companies ignore their (people's) ability to deliver genuine knowledge, opting instead to crank out sterile happytalk that insults the intelligence of markets literally too smart to buy it."

"The Second Superpower Rears its Beautiful Head," by James F. Moore raises an interesting argument, but makes a claim that I disagree with. Moore says, "Thus the new superpower demonstrates a new form of “emergent democracy” that differs from the participative democracy of the U.S. government." With the recent immigration marches occurring for civil rights, I disagree that "emergent democracy" differs from participative democracy. I'm sure there was text messaging and blogging going on here.

The GNU Manifesto has some interesting discussion about programmers and their role in the development of Linux. There seems to be talk that programmers are losing their jobs and there is little value for the. Today though, it seems that programmers are doing well and there is a growing market for people entering this profession.

1. The Clutrain Manifesto says, "Corporate firewalls have kept smart employees in and smart markets out. It's going to cause real pain to tear those walls down." What are some ways to start tearing down these walls?

2. Explain some ways the individual contributes to this "second superpower."

3. Has the development of modern and current operating systems led to similar effects as the development of Linux did in the 1980s?