Websites, intranets, message boards, email blasts, blogs, developer conferences, sales presentations, and CEO keynotes — it's about communicating. It all matters. Whether it's a blog, an e-news letter, or a presentation, what audiences and customers yearn for from organizations is authenticity and transparency, simplicity, and a real human, emotion-without-the-BS approach to communicating. A real conversation...for a change. The Cluetrain tenets — the "95 Theses" at the beginning of the book — speak largely to wired communications. But it's all communication.

We don't believe what we're saying at work. We know no one else believes it either. But we keep saying it because because because because the needle's stuck... Because who would we be if we didn't talk like that? (p. 178)‏

The point is what this latest technological wonder brings back into the world: the human story... And next time you wonder what you're allowed to say at work, online, downtown at the public library, just say whatever the hell you feel like saying. Anyone asks you, tell 'em it's OK. Tell 'em you read about it in a book (p. 179).

As established markets broke up into a “zillion micromarkets,” “new knowledge was desperately needed to fuel this expansion, and this is when companies discovered what workers had long suspected but never talked about except in the washroom: management didn't know its ass from a hole in the ground (p. 160).

Command and control is widely perceived as dysfunctional, but it's a hard-to-break habit. Many business leaders are well aware that bureaucratic hierarchy works against needed knowledge and communication, yet inertia is a powerful force (p. 162).

What can business do?

Some along the line, we confused going to work with building a fort” (p.116), where we have everything we need within our walls, the outside is dangerous, the king rules, we each have a defined role, and the goal is to beat the enemy.

The Web, in the form of a corporate intranet, puts everyone in touch with every piece of information and with everyone else inside the organization and beyond... Conversations subvert hierarchy. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy. Being a human being among others subverts hierarchy (p. 121).

The first markets were filled with people, not abstractions or statistical aggregates; they were the places where supply met demand with a firm handshake. Buyers and sellers looked each other in the eye, met and connected (p. 74).

Authenticity, honesty and personal voice underlie much of what's successful on the web (p. 51).

We seem to know, intuitively, when something spoken, written or recorded is sincere and honest—when it comes from another person's heart rather than being a synthesis of corporatespeak filtered by myriad iterations of editing, trimming and targeting (p. 65).

Stories play a large part in the success of organizations. With stories, we teach, pass along knowledge of our craft to colleagues, and create a sense of shared mission (p. 67).

We don't know what the web is for, but we've adopted it faster than any technology since fire... it is the granting of a place in which we can be who we are (and even who we aren't, if that's the voice we've chosen) (pp. 43-44).

We may still have to behave properly in committee meetings, but increasingly the real work of the company is getting done by quirky individuals who meet on the Web... [moving] ahead faster than the speed of management.

Somewhere along the way, markets latched on to mass production, “characterised by alienation and mystery (p. 10).

Just about all the concessions we make to work in a well-run, non-disturbing, secure, predictably successful, managed environment have to do with giving up our voice (p. 42).

The internet is inherently seditious. It undermines unthinking respect for centralized authority, whether that 'authority' is the neatly homogenized voice of broadcast advertising or the smarmy rhetoric of the corporate annual report (p. 8).