Hurley's World

A while back, I stood up and I swept my arm across the nerd table, knocking the Technorati Kool-Aid to the ground, and proclaimed that Attention Trust was a steaming pile of shit, covered in fancy words displayed on screen using abnormally large fonts. Oddly, some people took notice. I guess sometimes you need to break some things and cause a scene in order to get your point across. Or at least to get people to pay attention to you (oh the irony). The juxtaposition between my communication style, and that of Seth Goldstein’s was immediately apparent. Seth: Yes, we are driving the keyboard and mouse to search for things and in this way we are in control; but this activity can also be seen as a form of programming the way we want to be programmed. As radical Internet creator Josh Harris kept chanting at Pseudo.com in 1998 “Let us show you how we show you how to live.” Like so many Web applications, but on a much grander scale, Google takes what I am looking for (literally my attention) and turns it into a commodity called a keyword, which in turn gets pooled and traded by advertisers and publishers who don’t give me anything in return but do subsidize my use of Google search, my storage in Gmail, etc Me: I honestly believe that if someone like Seth Goldstein farted in a mic, recorded it as a .fart file, call it fartcasting, within 5 minutes, everyone on the open media 100 would be hailing it as world changing in a semi co-ordinated cyber circle jerk complete with sloppy track-backs. Since this first little flare up, things have been happening for the boys over at Root.net, and I am starting to see more of what they are up to take shape. However, my initial criticism still stands, in that they NEED to make this more easily digestible. Their posts and their information are far to wordy, and at times, far to abstract in their tone. I work in the lead generation business, and I have for almost 5 years. I understand the business, and I would consider myself to be a moderately intelligent person…but I still have a hard time wrapping my pea brain totally around their concept, much less working what they are doing into my personal and professional life. But I am not about to just stare blankly at their “web 2.0″ website and try to absorb it like one of those magic eye posters. Not this time. This time, I am going to the source. I am going to Vaultstock, I am bringing my notepad and a number two pencil, and I am going to come back with some answers. And I am also going to ball-taser anyone who says “web 2.0″.