Karlin Lillington has a great profile of Joichi Ito, including this pearl of wisdom from him:
“One of the things I’ve found is that people don’t like to be compared to ants.”
D’oh!
Mr Joichi Ito is explaining why he is passionate - one might argue, obsessed - with what happens when you link together hundreds upon thousands of people over the Web to form vast, conversing communities.
What happens then, and what he hopes will happen more extensively, is a synergistic form of communication where the whole is greater than the parts. One could compare this - if, as Mr Ito acknowledges, people weren’t getting so tired of the analogy out in the Web world - to the collective power of an ant or bee colony.
Oh, man. It would appear that my goose is cooked! What can I say, it seemed like a good analogy when I started this thing up a year ago. If it’s out of style now — well, so’s my hair :-)
What do you think — is “Ant’s Eye View” a turn-off? Drop your humble editor a line and let me know.
Posted by Jason Lefkowitz at June 03, 2003Ant's Eye View is edited by Jason Lefkowitz, a consultant and Web developer in Alexandria, Virginia. Got a question, comment, or concern? Let me hear it!
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