The Cluetrain Manifesto and The Incommunicado Reader

I am reading (simultaneously) The Cluetrain Manifesto and The Incommunicado Reader. Both make me somewhat unhappy.

Cluetrain Manifesto (that is an absolutely out of date critique, but it doesn't matter), seems to assume there is only a duality human beings X corporations. How not true is this? How complicate it is to put under the same umbrella people that actually don't really like each other at all and don't want to talk to each other? Don't want to stabilish a conversation?

The incommunicado readers seems to notice this: the discourse of just separating the good from the bad. (I know I am judging, and I promise I will come back and apologize later, when I understand them better. If needed).

The network IS the society

It is not as simple as it sounds, and it is not new at all. But sometimes we have insights, and sometimes we write them down in our weblogs, and sometimes they're useful to something. (Hey, Edgar, I am giving a gift to someone, I believe. That's somewhat a presumptuous way of thinking, don't you agree? Jeje...)

Anyways, point is: you don't have to include people "socially" AND "digitally". It's the same thing. You see? So, assuming that it IS the same thing, it's absolutelly essential that people that are working for social inclusion ALSO digital include people. Right? Ok. SO. Question: Are those people supposed to be socially including other people, digitally including them?

... does someone have any suggestion about a better of way of putting this? In the direction of transforming it in a research question? Thanks. :)

Information society - technology determinism?

Just a quick though, so it won't get lost: I am reading Daniel Bell's “Foreword: 1976”. The Coming of Postindustrial Society" (Nueva York: Basic Books, 1999), written in 1976, for the advanced seminar offered by UOC and OII. Anyways, the texts for this week talk a lot about the transition from industrial society to post industrial society. Gee, was there an industrial society, first of all? Isn't this a quite linear way of thinking development? Isn't it slightly too generic?

I mean, really, do societies really develop in one linear way? ... ok, back to the readings. Just had to write this somewhere...

Serenata moderna

Ontem à noite, voltando para casa, eu vi uma cena digna de nota: um jovem apaixonado estava na rua, olhando para cima, às vezes subindo em um apoio, tentando fazer sua homenagem musical ser ouvida por sua amada, que lhe observava da sacada... porém o instrumento que o jovem usava não era nada mais que seu celular com MP3, onde ele gravara a música, e agora estendia o braço para cima, oferecendo-a para a dama da janela...