Umair Haque's somewhat ironic views on comments.

1) The value's in the conversation.

2) If you can't have a conversation, you can't create much value in the attention economy.

3) Pretending a conversation never happened isn't just kind of infantile, it's actively destroying value.

4) Now, I'm not saying that lunatics should be given free reign to comment. But neither should editors and execs think they have, anymore, totally free reign to dictate how the resources of the firm are used. In many cases, they're much better off thinking of those resources as common resources - in this case, editors are much better off thinking the paper belongs to both readers and writers.

5) The lines between public and private are necessarily blurred in a conversation. It's not rigidly controlled business meetings that takes place in communities, markets, and networks, at the edge. It's raw, sometimes a bit brutal, often full of crap conversations - but from an economic point of view, they're hyperefficient.

6) Not to learn how to leverage this is going to be fatal - you can't fight an economic discontinuity.