[Dean's World] Dean: An Army Of Davids

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Posted by Dean:
An Army Of Davids
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1151136711.shtml


   I have not yet read [1]An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology
   Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other
   Goliaths. I probably won't, either, since everything I've heard about
   what's in it strikes me as entirely self-evident.

   Indeed, it seems to me that the ideas in it are even better contained
   in a computer hacker's book called [2]The Cathedral and the Bazaar by
   Eric S. Raymond. Perhaps you have to be a computer geek to understand
   that wonderful little tome, but if so that's unfortunate; what it lays
   out is a theory of human behavior that is both logically consistent
   and empirically proven.

   And as it happens, the blogosphere works along the same principles as
   open source software. The objections to it are exactly the same, too:
   why, without layers of fact-checkers and editors and review, you'll
   have chaos, cats and dogs living together, mass-steria! The reality
   that emerges is, however, quite beautiful and quite stable. The
   objections come most strongly from those elitists who intensely
   dislike the fact that there are a lot of learned, thoughtful,
   intelligent, well-written people who simply do not see things their
   way.

   Whether it's journalists, scientists, legal scholars, theologians, it
   matters not: you can not hide behind bluster in this medium. Or, you
   can hide behind bluster, but if so you'll be ridiculed mercilessly and
   will limit your own audience.

   You'll also find that the more transparent you are, the more respected
   you'll be even when people don't like you.

   Here is a most beautiful summation by [3]this review by Frank Wilson
   of An Army of Davids:

     The institutional superego has been found to filter out viewpoints,
     not because those viewpoints are ill-informed or poorly reasoned,
     but because they run counter to said superego's favored viewpoint.
     It is just possible that people will discern quality of thought and
     art when it is presented to them. It is just possible that when
     people regard something as true or beautiful they may be correct -
     even if the self-designated arbiters of thought and expression
     think otherwise.

   Every time some condescending snot tells me "oh it's just a blog" or
   "they're just bloggers" I laugh. What was it that they thought
   [4]Thomas Paine was doing back in the late 1700s, anyway?

References

   1. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1595550542/qid=1151135541/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-1551356-5923200?s=books&v=glance&n=283155/deansworld01-20
   2. http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/
   3. http://booksinq.blogspot.com/2006/06/its-time-i-joined.html
   4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_paine