David Weinberger's Buzz Soup:

"THE UNDERNET"

By David Weinberger
Editor, Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization

I hate to be the last to hear about a buzzword, so when Dr. Gerri Sinclair, CEO of NCompass Labs (www.ncompass.ca) asked the audience at a recent Documentation conference if they'd heard the term "undernet," I was hoping some hands would remain down along with mine. Indeed, Gerri seems to be ahead of the curve on this one; AltaVista can't find any interesting instances of the term.

Whew! It's a great term for a really important phenomenon and deserves greater currency. Gerri uses it as the fourth type of 'Net, after Internet, intranet and extranet. The undernet, as I understand it (and since it apparently isn't in circulation yet, we can probably understand it any way that pleases us), consists of the intranets and intranet sites that escape the official gaze of The Corporation -- the pages created by ad hoc teams, interest groups and individuals with something to say. Your undernet is, in short, the lifeblood of your organization.

There's little doubt that the undernet is a real phenomenon. In the November 15 issue of PC Week, an article by Matt Hicks mentions that Wells Fargo has made its intranet avaialble to about 35,000 employees. Since initially launching it as a Human Resources tool, "employee teams have created sites to manage specific projects..." There are now more than 1,000 sites, which Wells Fargo is attempting to organize through a portal. Likewise, Hicks reports that Lockheed Martin has more than 1,000 intranet sites. And several years ago, a chip maker installed a corporate intranet and invited anyone who'd created her own to get listed; within a few months, over 350 people had registered ... and who knows how many people chose not to?

So, the predictable has happened. Web technology is too simple and by its nature resists centralization. So of course Web sites spring up like mushrooms in dark, well-fertilized places. No permission or advanced technical skills are required. Why, even marketing folks like me can do it!

There are two characteristics of undernets that make them especially fascinating. First, as organizations try to regain control of their intranets by putting policies into place, by requiring that content by filtered, by building portals as a way to Authorize and Defend the glorious Corporate Image, they will merely push more people onto undernets. The same will happen if governments try to control the Internet. The Internet routes around censors, idiots, and control freaks ... and becomes an undernet.

Second, if you look at undernets as a fourth in the holy trinity of Internet, intranet and extranet, you'll miss an important change. Undernets don't (won't?) respect corporate boundaries. Frequently, customers have more in common with an employee than the employee's manager does. After all, both the customer and the employee are enthusiastic about the company's product (we hope!) and an employee who's neck deep in product competency forms a natural bond with a customer who uses the product every day. The undernet isn't going to respect the imaginary wall that's supposed to exist between the customer and the employee. (If it's a real fire wall, then there's a different type of issue.)

So, undernets are real. Undernets are where the untrammeled creativity of the Web is. And, most important, "undernet" is a cool word.

David Weinberger writes JOHO and is one of the Ringleaders of cluetrain.com, a manifesto of web ethics. He also provides strategic marketing consulting to high-tech companies, writes for several magazines (including Wired) and is a commentator on NPR's "All Things Considered." He was, as VP of Strategic Marketing, one of the shapers of Open Text's intranet strategy. David sits on several conference boards and is a member of AIIM's Emerging Technology Advisory Group. Reach him at self@evident.com.