David Weinberger published Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A unified theory of the web in 2002. I just got to the book a few weeks ago, after finding a hardcover copy lying about the office during a move. Like The Tipping Point, Small Pieces is one of those books I’ve heard about and lived (in some small ways), so I wasn’t surprised by the tone or the broad message. But I am still startled by some of the phrases and phrasings which encapsulated some of my own thoughts about the way the web really is life-changing.
Weinberger, like others who write well, records his thoughts in ways that resemble thinking. That talent requires a disciplined ignorance of everything that might interfere with or interrupt the translation from ideas to words. Personally, I usually find that concentration only when reading, or lying in bed unable to sleep. Getting up to write it down is futile, so far.
I actually picked up a pen and marked a few pages to record here, which shows you (a) how much I enjoyed this book and (b) how much the idea of blogging what I read is changing how I read. Here are the passages I’d like to “underline” for others.
Words may be the stuff of the Web, but time determines its structures. And it’s as if we’re trying to fill every available temporal niche on the Web with new types of talking. [p. 62, from Chapter 3, Time… of course I jump at that one]
When it comes to failure, corporations use these formulaic, ritualistic words precisely so that our eyes have no purchase on what’s written. [p. 73, reminds me how people are always surprised to get a response to an email they write to a site… and why I get such pleasure out of showing readers “behind the curtain” at work]
Unlike databases, jokes, the other form of knowledge on the Web, reveal what you weren’t expecting. If they’re predictable, they’re about as funny as a database. … Laughter is the sound of sudden knowledge.
The Web is useful because of the database applications that let us look up information, find flights, make reservations, buy books. The Web is exciting not because it gives us the efficiency of databases but because it gives us the punch of a good joke. [p. 144… read on through the end of 145, which is also the end of Chapter 6, Knowledge]
Yet, considered simply as written, these two pages have something important, and quite simple, in common: both sites were created because the authors wanted to share something with others. Despite their difference in content and style, both pages are social acts, written with others in mind. We take that for granted when we visit a site. We understand without having to think about it that the site expresses a point of view. [p. 165]
Three side notes:
- I still have not read The Cluetrain Manifesto. Weinberger is one of the four co-authors. I think admitting this fact on my blog revokes my credentials? But the first step in any program is admitting you need help! 😉
- Weinberger, of course, has been blogging about as long as anyone. I’ve been there a few times, but not often.
- The copy I have is a signed copy, with a short note to a former News.com colleague, Jennifer Balderama, whose blog I haven’t read in a long time. I think she’s at the Washington Post still.
Happy to return the book anytime… but glad it survived in the newsroom this long, so I could get around to catching up, two years later.