RoughType.com
Title
Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog
Description
June 12, 2006
So Microsoft's self-styled human face is now some other company's human face. This must be the first corporate human face transplant ever attempted. Will it take? Or will the new body reject the used puss? And what does it say about this whole human face business when a person proclaims himself to be a company's human face and then, when a better offer comes along, tears himself from the old noggin and stitches himself to the new one? That seems a little untoward to me. If I were in a punny mood, I just might call it a mugging.
A company should probably be a little nervous about letting some blogger set up shop as its human face. The earnings the blogger pulls in through the attention economy may accrue more to his own bottom line than the firm's. As Doc Searls puts it in a post titled "companies are schwag": "what matters most in the long run is who you are. Not who you work for." Which is something a company might want to keep in mind when choosing a face, or even a mask, for that matter.
Not long ago, the big-time tech publisher and conference impresario was talking up Web 2.0 as a means of achieving a "technology-mediated" higher consciousness. But a shadow seems to have fallen across O'Reilly's optimism. In a commencement speech last month, he cautioned, "If history is any guide, the democratization promised by Web 2.0 will eventually be succeeded by new monopolies [which] will have enormous power over our lives - and may use it for good or ill." A couple of weeks ago, after being mugged in absentia by a hysterical blog mob, O'Reilly said the experience "has shaken my faith in the collective intelligence of the blogosphere."
Languages
English
Additional Information
Related Domains
External Links
- Alexa: RoughType.com
