Net Gain (washingtonpost.com): 'Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web' by David Weinberger "Remember the Cluetrain Manifesto? In 1999, this peculiar document momentarily captured the fickle attention of the online world -- and ultimately inspired a bestselling business book. Taking the form of 95 short "Theses" ("Markets are conversations," "Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy"), the Manifesto was a petulant plea for "clueless" corporations to abandon their stuffy ways in favor of the freewheeling discourse of the online world. "You want us to pay?" the writers asked. "We want you to pay attention. . . . Drop your trip, come out of your neurotic self-involvement, join the party."
Given that the essence of the 95 Theses could be boiled down to perhaps a sentence or two, it's remarkable that the Manifesto writers managed to pull a whole book out of it. But such is the power of (dumb) ideas. Now David Weinberger, one of the authors of the Manifesto, has conjured up a book of his own, a baffling little volume that purports to offer a "unified theory of the web.""