Quote du jour

Jeff Jarvis:

  We knew the White House was a vacuum. Congress is a vacuum. Wall Street is lie. Detroit and the era it represents is dust. Journalism is sinking like a wet witch.
  Who’s in charge? It’s falling to us, the people. We’re in charge. Problem is, we’re not ready. We’ve used the internet so far to organize some knowledge and yell at each other. We are just beginning to create the tools to organize ourselves. If only the meltdown of every authority structure could have waited a few years. Then again, necessity is the mother of organization. New structures don’t replace old structures while they’re still in place. New structures fill voids. And, boy, do we have some voids to fill.

Room for the new world we need to terraform.



7 responses to “Quote du jour”

  1. Doc, I like the Giant Zero idea, the Internet has pretty much made the cost of instant communication affordable for most of humanity (as evidenced by the fact that more than half of all people alive have a cell phone, made possible my networks).

    The cost of communication effectively reaches zero, which means something new has to be the limit… it’s the human attention which now can’t be commodified or mass produced. It can only be used more efficiently.

    We’re learning as blogs help us to channel our energies into more productive use and we do have a lot to learn, but it’s encouraging. Jeff’s latest piece says that the story is no longer the basis of Journalism, and I think it’s no longer the basis of blogging either.

    We’re evolving networks in our own mind of experts, sources we turn to for information on a specific topic, people we can trust to save our attention for things we really need to deal with.

    The future looks bright, and it’s wide open. 8)

  2. […] RTWT. Doc Searls Weblog · Quote du jour […]

  3. The text of the bailout bill has been published:

    http://senateconservatives.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/bailouttext.pdf

    It’s 451 pages long!

    Not for the first time, I wish that legal matters went under git source code control and we had committer logs.

    I actually bothered to read (it took me 3 days) and report on the 100+ page original bill at length in my blog. I’m too tired and ill to take this one on. Wasn’t the Senate supposed to be that staid, solid, and deliberative body of wise old men? I’d love a filibuster right around now – someone just reading the whole bill aloud would be great entertainment.

    A few of the earmarks stuffed in the bill (via michelle malkin)

    It’s PORKOLICOUS:

    – Film and Television Productions (Sec. 502)
    – Wooden Arrows designed for use by children (Sec. 503)
    – 6 page package of earmarks for litigants in the 1989 Exxon Valdez incident, Alaska (Sec. 504)

    Tax earmark “extenders” in the bailout bill.
    – Virgin Island and Puerto Rican Rum (Section 308)
    – American Samoa (Sec. 309)
    – Mine Rescue Teams (Sec. 310)
    – Mine Safety Equipment (Sec. 311)
    – Domestic Production Activities in Puerto Rico (Sec. 312)
    – Indian Tribes (Sec. 314, 315)
    – Railroads (Sec. 316)
    – Auto Racing Tracks (317)
    – District of Columbia (Sec. 322)
    – Wool Research (Sec. 325)

  4. The only thing I don’t understand is why he puts the decline of journalism into the present tense, not the past tense. Well, I do understand. But I think he shouldn’t. Journalism As We Know It is long past due.

  5. Stephen, it kind of reminds me of the original subtitle for this blog, which was taken from Cluetrain: “the continuing end of business as usual.”

  6. […] reading the entire 451 page (yes, as in Fahrenheit) bailout bill (amended and revised), which he calls porkolicious. I read the first few dozen pages, and what sticks out for me is that it gives the Treasury […]

  7. […] hey, it’s cool. There’s sweeteners to make it all go down better. And if that’s not good enough for you, maybe you better head […]

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