Enjoying what was new about hyperlinked friendships and collaboration, we spent the later part of 2001 contemplating our blog navels. Many of us involved in those discussions still circulate 'round as friends; more of us, probably, have gone.
When I look back, I think that we had a lot of things right. I am also astounded at how little the current day pundits of blogitry reference the good thinking that took place when this medium was in its toddler days.
Here is Tom Matrullo on what blogging might mean to corporations ala Gonzo Marketing back on Gonzo Engaged in 2001.
Today it reads like prophetic thinking (at least better than most current-day conference session abstracts). As usual for Tom, it is also great writing:
One way of looking at "The Value Proposition" – (though Mr. Locke might not put it this way) is: If a corporation understands no value other than its core capital, then it is at war with everything on earth that does not form part of or enhance the core.
As Hernani noted, the book calls for corporations to invest in, to underwrite, enterprises that in no direct or measurable way contribute to the enhancement of its capital. In a sense, instead of the usual ho-hum mode of “invest x to get return y,” the corporation is invited to take a flying leap of faith that its capital, plowed back into the loam of people, ideas, enthusiasms, issues, communities - in short, values other than those of the balance sheet – will turn, twist, explore, resurface, appear rather odd, wither in part, explode, propagate and, much like the nonlinear mode of "the story" that is explicitly a structuring theme of Gonzo Marketing, yield unexpected fruit. This would appear to represent a substantive change in current business practice for most corporate capitalists.
Well said. Perhaps as the blogworld drones on about emerging this-n-that, we could look back on what has been dreamed, thought, said, argued, and include the best of that as we thread our discourse forward. It would only make sense for a medium built upon links to build threads of value backwards as well as forward.
Unfortunately, with search engines geared toward delivering us "current events" the "news of the day," the "latest book reviews" and (my least favorite) "hot topics," the solid thinking and once-upon-a-time wonder of early net writers is not easily referenced.
It's more than unfortunate. It's frustrating.
