Was ist Web 2.0 (außer einem genialen, die Phantasie anregenden und den Hype anheizenden Buzzword)? Auf dem O’Reilly Radar erscheint Doc Searls, neben David Weinberger einer der Autoren des Cluetrain Manifesto, und gibt eine moralphilosophische Deutung des Phänomens. Er unterscheidet drei Moralsysteme:

• Morality of self-interest. This gives us "owning", "domination", etc. The Old School. Industrial Age shit. Still prevails in many business plans that are just for killing other companies.
• Morality of accounting. We balance everything. "Paying debts", "owing favors". This is our system of justice, by the way. It’s all about accounting. (Note the scales of justice symbol.)
• Morality of generosity. We give. We are open. We love without expectation of reward, or even accounting. (In fact, when you bring in accounting, you compromise it.) Think about how we give to our spouses, our children, without strings. It pays off, too. But that’s fundamentally not what it’s about.

Web 2.0 (und natürlich distanziert sich Doc Searls von diesem Begriff) fällt seiner Ansicht nach zum Teil in die dritte Kategorie. Sein Beispiel ist Flickr – eben kein Datensilo, sondern eine völlig offene Plattform:

Most of all, however, it is a "good citizen". It is generous where it counts. Nurturing. People love Flickr because Flickr loves people. The good guys finish first. In this case, anyway.

Jetzt aber wird es spannend. Denn Doc Searls bezieht die drei Typen von Moral auf ein Marktmodell, das aus drei Elementen besteht:

• Relationship
• Conversation
• Transaction

Und der Rest ist so schön, dass ich ihn in voller Länge zitieren muss:

We need transaction, but can’t reduce everything to it. Although there are whole B schools that have been doing that for 100 years.

We need conversation as well. Which is why we wrote Cluetrain.

But relationship is what actually makes markets. I’m talking about real markets here: places where we do business and make culture. Relationship takes the passions we put into creating businesses and makes them work in the social context we call a market. (Did anybody ever go into business because they were looking for a way to please stockholders?)

You have to be generous in relationships.

Die Debatte bei O’Reilly Radar ist höchst interessant zu lesen.