Roots of Civil Discourse?
Civil discourse must be just that,
civil.
As bloggers, we're inclined to be civil to each other, even
as we flame those without a blog (Karl Rove being my current favorite). Listening
to Chris Lydon's interview of
Jim Moore, I appreciated the suggestion that BloggerCon might promote activism:
What's your hope, your ambition for BloggerCon?
I would
love it if BloggerCon could showcase how activists of various stripes
can
be
enabled
by technology
to join
with
others to
shape a wiser and more creative world."
How will we do it?
I think we do it by listening to each others' human
voices. I think we do it by taking our best, our most precious, but also
slightly transgressing kinds of ideas and pushing them forward through
blogging so we advance the frankness and the openness of dialogue. I
think we do it by trying to live out values of dialogue and understanding
and
love on the web.
How might understanding have a role for activism? It might
be by tempering the Scorched Earth tradition of politics. For that to
happen, there must surely be a new way of talking about politics. Now that
candidates must have a blog voice, might there be an incipient mechanism
for a resurgence
of substance over innuendo?
Wouldn't it be interesting if candidates'
bloggers developed a shared aesthetic and perhaps even a kind of backchannel
that promoted the kind
of issues-based
civility that characterizes blogging rather than the attack politics that
characterizes broadcast politics. It might be a metaphor for the State
Department promoting
constructive engagement in opposition to ChickenHawk belligerence. You
know, like the unwritten rule that we NEVER WRITE IN ALL CAPS.
If candidates'
bloggers are to be their foreign ministers, the meme might get started
this weekend.
Roland on the River
Meanwhile, back at our crow's nest overlooking the East River,
Roland Tanglao is setting up the Xpertweb code on my PowerBook for our BloggerCon
demo at 9am Sunday at the BOF session in Pound 201. We'll demo through the
break
so you can stop by at 10:30 between sessions 1&2.
Xpertweb is a protocol for maintaining mirrored transaction
data on 2 web sites, where the seller and the buyer are equally equipped
to conduct business. The transaction progresses through discrete stages:
- Discover a seller
- Identify a product and qualify the buyer (buyer's digital
ID)
- Specify delivery options, dates, etc.
- Negotiate the details
- Remark on work in progress (including change orders)
- Invoice upon completion
- Evaluate the transaction (by both buyer and seller)
There's nothing dramatic about the process except that it's
not dependent on a central server so the parties to a transaction can manage
their market conversation without an intermediary. Both user's sites are
equipped with tools for maintaining the kinds of explicit data types common
to all transactions,
plus unique data types for product specification.
9:22:27 PM 
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