Imperative manifestos

Hugh McLeod started a "manifesto madness" last year (easy saying that on the 2nd of Jan) and I regularly check back to read some of the manifestos posted. Many of them I like, some parts I found brilliant, others didn't exactly waste my time but won't be the inscripition of my grave either.

After a while, it occurred to me that pretty much all of them are written in imperative form, as a set of rules. That didn't bother me at all, until I came to read one that I didn't agree with, and it was telling me what to do, think and it wasn't being nice doing so.

So now I'm wondering - is the only difference between a brilliant manifesto and a bossy, arrogant text you immediately feel attacked by, whether you agree with the idea or not? Right now I tend to agree.

I'm also wondering why these manifestos are written that way.
Don't pretend this. Think that. If you don't have this, then forget it. Stop doing that.

I wasn't sure what exactly a manifesto is by definition, anyway, so I looked it up and here's what Wikipedia says at the moment:

A manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature.

In my opinion, declaring principles and intentions does not require postulating rules like orders. I think it is easy to inspire and motivate people using imperatives when they at least have a basic agreement on what you feel. They feel you, can't word it as nicely as you, but yeah, they know what you're talking about.

When you try to convince someone who feels differently, though, I think manifestos like most of the ones posted won't do anything but inspire the reader to close the tab or window as quickly as possible. Especially since many manifestos simply declare rules without giving valid reasons. I could go on for hours about manifestos that say "Don't do ... , that's just the way ... works". Right.

So all in all I think manifestos are a way for people to share common values through a brilliantly worded summary, but they won't make an impression on someone who isn't on this track anyway, unless he or she has a whole lot of faith in the author's competence on the subject.
Can manifestos work if they are worded differently? If I find one that politely asks me to reconsider my opinions, I'll tell you. :) I wonder how many are out there.

My (probably all-time) favorite manifesto, with imperatives, rules and all? The Desiderata.

Naming yourself

How do you find a name for a project? I'm currently trying to come up with something brilliantly smart and interesting for our acoustic guitar + vocals duo. I wonder how these extremely high-paid naming agencies do their job. I tried some of those band name generators on the net, but nothing really came up I liked.

My first thought was to call it AudioMousse, because the concept was to make smooth music for bars and cafés, kind of like dessert for your ears. I think there is already some music project with that name somewhere in the world, though, I found some URL that had the name in it on a french server. I also tried to come up with some funny word play names with the whole dessert/desert thing, but I think if we call the project desserted people will just think we have a typo in our name :)

I guess I'm already thinking too hard about this. Creativity on demand is not something I believe in.

La Fonera

S60's Tommi just posted an "advertisement" for FON's La Fonera for free offer to create a large network of Wifi access points which people share. I wanted to leave the following text as a comment, but it got so long I decided to post it here instead and make a shorter comment.

We had this offer in Germany as well. I think for a lot of people over here, the catch was pretty much not having clear information on the legal situation. It's not a pleasant thought to think that you share the WiFi access because you really like the idea (and it is a very neat idea, in my opinion), and a few months later the police comes knocking at your door holding you responsible because someone used your access point for something illegal. I for one have never really been sure whether "just running a la Fonera and people log in with their user names" is really sufficient, or whether you need to take additional precautions (IP logging or whatever).
There have been lengthy discussions in German forums, I don't know what the legal situation is like in Scandinavian countries.
For me, it's another good idea that I won't be part of because there is substantial legal risk, at least until someone clarifies the situation legally or fonera-infrastructure wise.
Also - I am having some problems buying the "we just wanted to create a community for people to share" slogan ;) It's still a well financed start-up which will use the infrastructure to make money. That's fine with me, some people seem to forget that aspect, though.