Bruce Sterling proves Michael Gorman right

Recently writing about why Michael Gorman didn’t quite get it right with his Britannica blog post about Web 2.0, I referenced Gorman’s reference of Lanier’s “digital maoism” by pointing toward tightly hyperlinked circle of friends that link in and out of boingboing lots.

So Bruce Sterling Googles himself (er, Technoratis himself), sees his name in the post, and drops a smarmy comment (which I allowed, why the hell not). Makes Gorman’s match point, unfortunately.

It was clear Bruce just swooped in to respond to his name being evoked, and that’s all he was there for. It was, seemed to me, an adolescent & knee-jerk response. Rather cheap, rather uncalculated, and more than a tad disappointing. After all, it’s not like I was being mean to him — I actually gave the lot referenced props for being so damn link worthy and bright.
Gorman was going on (and on) about how Web 2.0 undermines good scholarship, good communication, and authoritative sources. When we slice and dice and parse posts up into the fragments that (happen) to call up our personomies, it reads kinda thirteen-year-old. It reads as context-ignorant. It reads as really rather Gen-MySpace.

I forgive vanity searching. We all do it. But context and due consideration of content is worth about a billion drive-by comments.

A fella needs some close-linking friends, and that’s okay too. The web doesn’t have to be a schoolyard, folks.