Internet 101

In the beginning (or nearly so), there was the Internet. And it was good, quite good. But it was also misunderstood -- the victim of money, hype, and its own stunning and rapid ascendance to great heights.

To clear the air and set things straight, four wise men delivered the Cluetrain Manifesto in 1999 (which soon became a book). And that was good, if unorthodox. Originally, the Manifesto was nothing more than 95 theses, etched with some impatience but also with a nudge and a wink into the ether at www.cluetrain.com. "Markets are conversations," proclaimed the first thesis. "Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors," went the second. More provocative was the sixth: "The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media."

The Manifesto was born so that, put simply, we all might get a freakin' clue. Here -- in markets, conversations, and networks -- was what was truly important about the Internet.

Then the dotcoms exploded, IPOs cratered, and the Web became tarnished. And that was bad. It was so bad that folks began to bad-mouth the Web, dismiss the Internet, and downplay the digital future.

And so it is that David Weinberger, one of the Manifesto's four original wise men, now returns. His new task: not just to explain the Web (again), but, even more important, to put right all of the misunderstandings, bad press, and ill will that have recently attached themselves to the Internet. His new message: The Web is, if anything, underhyped. The World Wide Web derives its value, Weinberger argues, from all of us who travel its pages. We are all small pieces of a grand machine, "loosely joining ourselves in ways that we're still inventing." Hence his book: Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web (Perseus Books, April 2002).

Weinberger, a former academic and public-relations executive, currently runs the strategic-marketing consulting firm Evident Marketing Inc. He also publishes JOHO: The Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization, an online 'zine that looks at how the Web affects the way that businesses work. In an interview with Fast Company, Weinberger offers a short course on the World Wide Web and its true power.

You say that the Web hasn't been hyped enough. Given all of the hype of the past few years, what did we miss?

The Web is a quintessentially human expression. In every case, what makes it interesting is not only the content but also the fact that it has a human voice and that it is part of the context of human life. It's not simply data or transactions from machine to machine. Certainly, there are transactions on the Web -- just as there are thousands of practically useless corporate Web sites. But that's not what's exciting. What's exciting is the ability for people to go online and talk with other people in their own voices. In order for the Web to work, there have to be individuals who are willing to express themselves in ways that are as idiosyncratic as they are.

But people can be idiosyncratic in the real world too.

Sure, idiosyncrasy is completely possible outside the Web. But there are some obvious differences. First of all, the barriers of distance are knocked down on the Web. But more important, real-world space demands consistency. People live in a community for decades because they have to hire moving vans to go someplace else. So we see the same people every day, and we feel compelled to maintain a consistent personality. On the Web, we don't have those constraints. We can choose to be anonymous, or we can choose to create multiple new selves -- playful or devious selves. Part of the joy of the Web is being able to shed the tight skin that the real world wraps us up in.

Most important, the Web connects us in very different ways. There is a person with whom I've been corresponding over the past 10 years on a very intermittent basis -- perhaps once every two years -- and then only when we have something interesting to talk about. If I come across a link, and I'm reminded of her, then I'll forward the URL. I don't know how to refer to this person. She's neither an acquaintance nor a friend. But we have a relationship that's based on a shared interest -- and I expect to have those kinds of relationships for the rest of my life.

If you believe, as I do, that humans are fundamentally connected -- that to be human means to be social -- then the Web offers a realm of pure connection. By its very nature as a web, it is hyperlinked. So for the first time, we have a medium that is a pure expression of our natural connectedness. The real world presents all sorts of barriers that prevent us from connecting as fully as we'd like to. The Web releases us from that. If connection is our nature, and if we're at our best when we're fully engaged with others, then the Web is both an enabler and a reflection of our best nature.