A manifesto for the Internet by Doc Searls and David Weinberger (who had earlier written The Cluetrain Manifesto) clears some misconceptions about the Net and states:
The Internet isn’t complicated
2. The Internet isn’t a thing. It’s an agreement.
3. The Internet is stupid.
4. Adding value to the Internet lowers its value.
5. All the Internet’s value grows on its edges.
6. Money moves to the suburbs.
7. The end of the world? Nah, the world of ends.
8. The Internets three virtues:
a. No one owns it
b. Everyone can use it
c. Anyone can improve it
9. If the Internet is so simple, why have so many been so boneheaded about it?
10. Some mistakes we can stop making already
The central point: “To connect to the Internet is to agree to grow value on its edges. And then something really interesting happens. We are all connected equally. Distance doesnt matter. The obstacles fall away and for the first time the human need to connect can be realized without artificial barriers. The Internet gives us the means to become a world of ends for the first time.”
Weblogs are another example of how value is being created at the “edges”. Even as big media publishes, flow is being created by tens of thousands individuals who now have a writing space to express their own thinking without having a central authority to moderate or filter it.
