The previous post and some to follow in the next few hours and days are coming from my reading (re-reading) of the final chapter of Small Pieces Loosely Joined. I’ve been having a different experience of this book a year later as my first reading was just prior to the begining of my “Weblog” startup (and instrumental in turning my attention to the Weblog phenomenon along with “Gonzo Marketing” by Chris Locke). Now, almost exactly a year later after my first reading, I sense that I know more of what is being said.

It’s all much more familiar territory. I have been explosed to the terminology and the favorite topics among the Weblogs that I read (like JOHO and SmartMobs — and also having read the book Smart Mobs —- and Doc and e-Church and other “Church bloggers” and “Social Software” discussions, and on and on through the gamut of things which link to things I link to. The RSS feeds and Trackbacks and Comments which weave a different kind of Distributed Conversation which I think is BIG STUFF for the Church. We need to get a grip on it; to “be there” and get to know the procedures to build these distributed conversations.
The experience of hearing David, along with AKMA at Vanderbilt about 4 weeks ago, suggested to me that I go back and re-read Small Pieces since I felt that in hearing David and resonating with the things he was saying, I was probably much more in tune with the things he had written about a year ago. Not that my first reading wasn’t postive. It was. One of the reasons I bought the book was that I figured it would be a “re-reader” to which I would want to return, and perhaps explore some of its points in later discussions (it being a “Theory of the Web” and all, and being sociological and psychological and even theological in its exploration). After a year of reading JOHO the Blog and then the Vanderbilt visit, I knew that I would have an increased “in-tune-ness” with what Small Pieces explores.