I know you’ve written long critiques about what you see as risk-shifting. I’ve written long replies saying a) we have no serious alternative; and b) there’s nothing wrong with people taking a bit more responsibility for knowing what they’re talking about. We will continue to disagree, fundamentally, on this issue. (Though I’m thinking I should at least point to one of our exchanges in the book.)

Dan, I’ve written long critiques, from the weakness of sermonizing to the fundamental wrongness of risk-shifting – see for example, the thread:

http://citmedia.org/blog/2008/10/03/cnns-small-mistake-apple-shareholders-big-one/

I suspect it won’t do anyone any good for me to re-iterate them. :-(

Let me just point to a column I wrote, with my concise summary of the New Media Landscape:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jun/17/seth-finkelstein-read-me-first

“There’s an old joke: in heaven the police are British, the mechanics German, the cooks French, the lovers Italian, and the Swiss organize it. In hell the police are German, the mechanics French, the cooks British, the lovers Swiss, and the Italians organize it. An Internet version might be: in theory, topic experts would supply our information, social networks would connect us for common humanity, and Google would organize it for authority. In practice, we get our information from the most attention-driven sites, social networks bundle us for marketing, and Google organizes it for ad sales.”

I only took a quick look at it and at this point I only have one general piece of advice: I’d skip the politics! mainly because it’s going to guarantee losing plenty of readers that would, otherwise, find your book useful.

Maybe write a different book on that?

Also, I see no good reason for excluding readers basically based on religion (re: Who is This Project Not For?) — yeah, you’d expect logical people to find that evolution is a much more likely explanation for how we got here but that doesn’t stop one of the major players in deciphering the human genome, for instance, from being a devout Christian. No need to be bringing that up, really (people have very strong private feelings about it whether it makes sense or not and would probably take offense).

The only traditional verboten subject of public conversation you missed is sex. Although, you could have worked it in as a joke: “this book is not for prudes! and don’t you dare read it…” :) *kidding*

Delia

Good luck with your book, can’t wait to read more!

Brevity ftw.