Small Pieces Loosely Joined (original) (raw)
First reactions...
"This is a book to savor. Not to speed read. I am not a techie - but I ardently believe the Web will change everything. David has made me laugh ... and frown ... and pause and think ... and scribble furiously in the margins ... and call friends a continent away for long conversations. That's exactly the right mood for exploring the consequences of the most profound medium of social and political and economic change in hundreds of years."
"Someday, someone was going to notice that the Internet is not just virtual, but instead connects to, and fundamentally affects, society. In this rich and beautiful text, Weinberger weaves an account of the places in our social and conceptual fabric where the Internet will pull, and possibly tear. This is not a book about the Internet and society; it is about society, marked with the net. "
Lawrence Lessig, The Future of Ideas, Stanford Law School
"In the tradition of Marshall McLuhan, David Weinberger has offered a startlingly fresh look at a new medium. At its heart, Small Pieces is an elegant and ultimately hopeful inquiry into the human condition itself. Once you read this book, you'll see the web - and yourself - in a whole new light."
Daniel H. Pink, author of Free Agent Nation
"David Weinberger is a rare discovery - an information guru who makes his complex message clear, allowing the access and understanding that are enhanced by storytelling and humor. Small Pieces is a big book, even better than his wonderful Cluetrain Manifesto."
Richard Saul Wurman, Information Anxiety, Access Guides, TED Conference
"Small Pieces provides the best of all combinations: deep, thoughtful commentary written as light, easy reading."
Professor Don Norman, Northwestern University, author of The Invisible Computer
"We haven't begun to understand how the connected world will shape our lives at a level deeper than commerce and conversation. Weinberger takes on the harder, deeper questions of values, social norms, and individual behavior that will be the Internet's real legacy."
Chris Meyer, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Center for Business Innovation, co-author of Blur
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David Weinberger
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Perseus Books
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Flap Copy
The Web doesn't exist in space, yet we talk about going to sites, entering them and leaving. Diaries move on line and suddenly they're more about creating selves than writing about them. Web sites don't have fences, yet a site for auction hunters was found to have trespassed on eBay, a metaphorical offense for which it paid a very real price. Companies invest heavily in professional, polished Web sites, but the Web rewards sites that revel in imperfection. Bits are the "atoms" of the Web, but they have no weight, no size and no real existence.
These anomalies are just a few that show how uncomfortable the fit between the Web and the real world is - and how deeply weird the ordinary life of the Web is. In this one-of-a-kind book of social commentary, David Weinberger takes us beyond the hype, revealing what is truly revolutionary about this new medium. Just as Marshall McLuhan forever altered our view of broadcast media, Weinberger shows that the Web is transforming not only transforming social institutions but also bedrock concepts of our world such as space, time, self, knowledge - even reality itself.
The Web would be important enough if it hooked up our species on a global scale. But, Weinberger argues, it is doing much more than that. Unlike previous technologies, such as the phone or fax, the Web is a permanent public space that gathers value every time someone posts a Web page, or responds on a discussion board, or replies to a mail list. The result is that the Web is a second world, layered on top of the real world, that's drawing into it more and more of our social life lives together.
Weinberger introduces us to the denizens of this second world, people like .Zannah, whose online diary turns self-revelation into play; Tim Bray, whose map of the Web reveals what's at the heart of the new Web space; and Danny Yee and Claudiu Popa, part of the new breed of Web experts we trust despite their lack of obvious qualifications. Through these stories of life on the Web, an insightful take on some familiar-and some unfamiliar-Web sites, and a pervasive sense of humor, Weinberger is the first to put the Web into the social and intellectual context we need to begin assessing its true impact on our lives.
The irony, according to Weinberger, is that this seemingly weird new technology is more in tune with our authentic selves than is the modern world. Because the Web foils our conventional assumptions about concepts like space and time and self, we are led back to a more authentic view of what it means to be a person sharing a world with others-whether it's the world of the Web or the real world of atoms. Our experience on the Web enables us to recapture the truth of our experience of the real world. Funny, provocative, and ultimately hopeful, Small Pieces Loosely Joined makes us look at the Web - and at life - in an all new light.
David Weinberger is the publisher of JOHO (Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization). He is a commentator on National Public Radio's All Things Considered and a columnist for Darwin Magazine, KMWorld and Intranet Design Magazine. Co-author of the bestselling The Cluetrain Manifesto, he has written for a wide variety of publications, including Wired, The New York Times, and Smithsonian, and gives talks around the world on what the Web is doing to business.
Table of Contents
0. Preface
The title and subtitle explained.
Read the entire chapter online
1. A New World
The Web - more an idea than a technology - is challenging the bedrock concepts of our culture: space, time, matter, knowledge, morality, etc.
Read the entire chapter online
2.Space
Why do we perceive the Web as a space when in fact it isn't?
Read the entire chapter online
3. Time
The Web is doing more than just speeding up our interactions and communications. It's threading and weaving our time, and giving us more control over it. (Plus: A really juvenile way to annoy your spouse!)
4. Perfection
The Web will always be a little broken says its creator, Tim Berners-Lee. Just like us mortals.
5. Togetherness
The Web is a new public space, solving the old contradiction between viewing ourselves as faceless members of a mass and as "face-ful" unique individuals.
6. Knowledge
We've thinned knowledge so far that we actually think we work like computers. The Web oddly retrieves a more bodily, less anorexic, sense of knowledge.
7. Matter
The very "stuff" of the Web is profoundly social and meaningful. It thus lets us see that our traditional realism is not only wrong but dreadfully alienating.
8. Hope
The Web's hyperlinked architecture is connective and based on shared caring. It thus reflects the basic structure of morality. Hope is in order.