Bob Metcalfe: Culture, Motives.
Bob Metcalfe gets periphery versus centre:
Please excuse any lack of collegiality on my part. Collegiality is not high on my priority list. After decades of fighting the status quo, I am wary of collegiality. Among the pathologies of collegiality are old boy networks – entrenched, resourceful, and nasty defenders of the status quo.
The way it connects to mass motivation too:
There are a good many of us involved in enertech who have what might be called ulterior motives. I, for example, am investing to get venture capital returns for our limited partners. So it was with the Internet. The trick is not to spend a lot of time denying and decrying ulterior motives. The trick is to get ulterior motives disclosed and aligned. We need to harness everybody’s motivations, not pretend they don’t exist or wish them away.
Worth reading; the text includes his own annotations and more by Bruce Sterling.
Over all, he seems to be saying: Hippies and establishment cronies alike, get out of the frigging way because there are really important problems to be solved. He also points out that clean energy isn’t a zero sum game, and goes on to talk about problems with the Green movements, from public perception to ulterior motives and fundamentally flawed ideology.
Full text at Viridian Design.