Arnold Kling has responded to Doc Searls’s and David Weinberger’s essay “World of Ends” in his TechCentralStation article “Geeks and Suits.”
I first encountered Kling in his book Under the Radar and his Corante blog “The Bottom Line” before moving on to his more economically-oriented EconLog.
“World of Ends” is a very Cluetrain-like manifesto—not surprising given that its two authors were Cluetrain authors as well—but addresses itself to a different group of people. They say that it’s supposed to be directed to executives, but I’m not sure that they’d get the inspired wisdom it’s suposed to deliver. [NOTE: inspired wisdom in the last sentence is supposed to be derogatory and sarcastic. If only there was markup for that.]
Kling does an excellent job of attacking their essay’s salient deficiencies. I concur with him. I don’t think I really have anything substantial to add to his criticism, though I think he’s a mite generous in leveling it.