if you are familiar with doc searls’ mantra then you won’t be too surprised by whose hand is that in your pocket?. nonetheless, it still provides a concise summary of Important Things That Shant Be Neglected:
“The problem here isn’t that Hailstorm cuts out competitors, or intermediaries, or anybody else. It’s that it cuts out markets. It bypasses the bazaar. It embraces and extends what producerism has succeeded in doing ever since John Wanamaker invented the price tag in the late 1800s.
“The challenge for the rest of us is to do with markets what we did with the Net in the first place: create ubiquitous conditions that make matrix-building impossible. That requires something many of us are not accustomed to doing: thinking about commerce. Specifically, thinking about markets as places, as environments, rather than as targets for stuff shoved down through the industrial distribution matrix.”
[ via cam ]