Monday, March 07, 2005

Serendipity and Grace



Chris Locke—one of the Cluetrainers, the Gonzo Marketer, RageBoy and, not least of all, Chief Blogging Officer—is doing some amazing writing lately.

Consider this quote from his recent search, serendipity and bricolage:
So there's search. But there are various kinds of search, and some of these "kinds" are more unalike than they are similar. That's part of the challenge of searching. Figuring out what you're looking for, and whether the things you turn up are really things-of-a-kind. Or not. But you can't know until you find them, and you wouldn't be searching if you already knew where they were. Am I right, Dude? This is where serendipity comes into it. The happy accident, the stochastic glitch, the cybernetic analog of grace. That changes your direction. Sometimes changes your life. But let's not get too heavy too soon. We're talking about search.
Oh man, "the cybernetic analog of grace!" The CBO can really turn a phrase—and he's dead right on. It's exactly what I asked earlier about doing a Leonardo. By striving for the findable and usable Web are we squeezing the serendipity, the accident, the grace right out of the Internet?

While reflecting on the above, I began Locke's next post, how hypertext works, when a familiar name appeared: David E. Rogers. Whoa, I thought, struck by the serendipity of the CBO himself quoting me.

So what's the big deal? I'll tell you. I might not be writing this were it not for the "cybernetic analog of grace" that led me to the original Webbed Cluetrain Manifesto, a work that so fired my imagination that it launched me into UXCentrism. Would a purely findable and usable Web have done the same? I think not.

1 Comments:

Blogger Christopher Locke said...

thanks, but don't mention it. all part of the service. ;-)

RB

7:02 PM  

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