Dreamer calls for revolution of the algorithm

Fresh from challenging Silicon Valley to invest in ethical Web 2.0 efforts, a blogger-cum-consultant has proclaimed a "manifesto" for the next industrial revolution using Web 2.0.

Umair Haque, director of the Havas Media Lab think tank and founder of Web 2.0 consultant Bubblegeneration - seriously is this post-modern irony, or what? - has called for a revolution in 21st century capitalism.

The vanguard for that revolution are the venture capitalists and start-ups of Silicon Valley. The tools for this revolution? The ever-elusive, universal computer algorithm.

In true Google style, Haque wants to organize. Not the world's information, though, but - well - everything.

Haque lists a whole bunch of things that need "organizing" including hunger and thirst - although quite how you achieve such worthy goals with Java or C is not entirely evident.

He even had a stab at writing his own manifesto and provoked a typically, half-baked discussion among the web equivalent of bleeding heart, hippy liberals.

Back in April Haque challenged Silicon Valley to put away its Web 2.0 toys and build some serious world-saving code - generously offering free consulting support to those he judged the "best" ideas.

When it comes to revolution, Haque and his disciples are not actually saying anything that Marx and Engels didn't say 160 years ago in the original Communist Manifesto. Simply - it would be nice if people did good things to benefit others. The trouble is, they don't and ideals wane.

For example: remember green computing, last year's big cause that was championed through talk of power-efficient servers and green code? Even that appears to be falling out of vogue. A survey, published this week by UK document management software vendor Version One, found the number of IT workers concerned about the environment had fallen by 11 per cent compared to last year.

Maybe they are following in the steps of another famous Marx - Groucho - who famously said: "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member."®