The Cluetrain Manifesto and Business and Technical Writing Classes

Okay, I've been thinking about this for months now, so I might as well blog about it. Here's my question: Does anyone teaching business writing and/or technical writing assign The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual? Based on what I know, my guess would be that either very few teachers assign it, or no one does. (If I'm wrong, please tell me; please set me straight.) So who cares, you might ask. Why are you sweatin' it, Clancy?

For me, it's about the disconnect between the way writing is taught and the way writing is, especially when it comes to business and technical writing. The Cluetrain Manifesto has been called "the most important book about communication written in the last 30 years." Many bloggers and other webby cognoscenti divide the world into pre-Cluetrain and post-Cluetrain. I'm not trying to say that Cluetrain should be treated as some sort of tech comm Bible or anything, but clearly it's a very important book worth at least reading and discussing in business and technical writing classes. I know it's not written by academic rhetoricians, but I think it ought to be assigned. I've been thinking about writing a review of it and sending it to the Journal of Business and Technical Communication. (Of course, if someone has already reviewed it for that journal, I'm going to feel like a real heel...a pleasantly surprised heel, though.) Consider some of the "95 Theses":

1. Markets are conversations.

2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.

3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.

4. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.

5. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.

[. . .]

20. Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At them.

21. Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously. They need to get a sense of humor.

22. Getting a sense of humor does not mean putting some jokes on the corporate web site. Rather, it requires big values, a little humility, straight talk, and a genuine point of view.

23. Companies attempting to "position" themselves need to take a position. Optimally, it should relate to something their market actually cares about.

24. Bombastic boasts—"We are positioned to become the preeminent provider of XYZ"—do not constitute a position.

25. Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships.

26. Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are deeply afraid of their markets.

27. By speaking in language that is distant, uninviting, arrogant, they build walls to keep markets at bay.

[. . .]

38. Human communities are based on discourse—on human speech about human concerns.

39. The community of discourse is the market.

40. Companies that do not belong to a community of discourse will die.

What do you think? Should I write this review and try to make a case for why I think this book should be assigned? How could this book change the way business and technical writing is taught? If you or anyone you know already assigns it, I'd love to hear it.