Christopher Locke (November 12, 1947 – December 20, 2021) was an American business analyst, consultant, journalist, author and speaker. He is known as a coauthor of The Cluetrain Manifesto, and author of two other books: Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices, and The Bombast Transcripts: Rants and Screeds of RageBoy. In a Financial Times Group survey from 2001, Locke was named as one of the fifty leading business thinkers in the world. ^[1]

Career

In the late 1970s, Christopher Locke was working as a construction contractor ^[2] and cabinet maker, but was forced out of business in the housing downturn of the early 1980s. ^[3]

His interest in artificial intelligence secured him a number of jobs in Tokyo between 1983 and 1985: He was working as a documentation editor for Fujitsu ^[2] and the Ricoh Software Research Center, ^[4] and as a technical editor at the Japanese government's Fifth Generation Computer Systems project. ^[5]

In 1986, Locke was working in the marketing department of Carnegie Group, an artificial intelligence firm in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, ^[5] where he became vice president of corporate communications, ^[6] a position he also held at Intelligent Technology, another AI firm in Pittsburgh.

He was director of industrial relations for the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University before joining Cimlinc in a similar capacity in 1991. ^[4]

In 1993, Locke founded Internet Business Report, an industry newsletter owned by CMP Publications. Serving as the publication's chief editor, he argued for the commercial use of the Internet. ^[7] His emphasis on respecting the norms of the "Internet community" provoked a disagreement over editorial direction with the publisher and led to his departure. ^[8]

In 1994 he initiated and oversaw the development and launch of MecklerWeb, an ambitious project that sought to introduce commerce to the Internet ^[8] and garnered much attention in the business press. ^[3] Locke's e-commerce concept was abandoned two weeks after the launch by the site owner, who chose to turn MecklerWeb's into a conventional product catalog. ^{[9] [10]}

Locke subsequently worked as editor and publisher of the Net Editors segment on internetMCI, ^[11] and as Program Director for Online Community Development at IBM. ^[11]

After leaving IBM, in 1996 and 1997, Locke served as vice president of business development for Displaytech in Longmont, Colorado. ^[12] In 1997, he set up as an internet consultant under the name Entropy Web Consulting ^[3] in Boulder, Colorado, ^{[9] [13]} practising an alternative to mass marketing he named 'gonzo marketing' after Hunter S. Thompson's gonzo journalism. ^{[9] [14] [15]} Gonzo marketing asserts that companies are ineffective in their use of the Internet as a marketing tool when they insist on lecturing instead of conversing, ^[16] and that companies need to improve their communications with customers to improve the quality of their products and services. ^[17]

In 2004 Locke accepted a job as consultant and Chief Blogging Officer for HighBeam Research. ^{[18] [19]}

Works

Locke's first publications in print were introductory articles on Lisp and natural language processing. ^[2] He has since written for Wired, Release 1.0, The Industry Standard, Harvard Business Review and many other publications. Since 2005, he has been writing the Mystic Bourgeoisie blog. ^[20]

In 1996, he launched Entropy Gradient Reversals, ^[9] a "strange webzine" ^[21] that specialized in "dissecting transparently clueless corporate Internet strategies" ^[14] and introduced RageBoy, Locke's intemperate alter ego who has a penchant for ranting against business orthodoxy. ^[9] As of April 1999, the publication counted nearly 3,000 subscribers. ^[3]

Locke is a co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, a tract that admonishes businesses to join the "networked conversations" of the Internet. The Manifesto was first posted to the Web in March 1999 ^[22] and became a business bestseller in an extended book version the next year. ^[23] In 2009 the book was re-issued as a tenth anniversary edition ^[24] with a new chapter from each of the original co-authors and commentaries by three new contributors. Locke's new chapter, "Obedient Poodles for God and Country," offers a scathing critique of the fake spirituality the author deems pervasive in contemporary American culture.

Locke is also the author of Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices, a book that expands on the Cluetrain Manifesto's themes, ^[25] and of The Bombast Transcripts: Rants and Screeds of RageBoy, a compilation of Entropy Gradient Reversals pieces. ^[9]

Locke has been praised by The Economist for the "wisdom of RageBoy." ^[26] In a Financial Times Group survey, he was named as one of the fifty leading business thinkers in the world. ^[1]

He died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease on December 20, 2021.

References

External links

• Kat Herding/Facebook
• The EGR Weblog (Archives: Aug 30, 2000 – Dec 23, 2006)
• Mystic Bourgeoisie
• Entropy Gradient Reversals (Archives: May 1, 1996 – Apr 20, 1999 · Jul 27, 1998 – Jan 26, 2003 · Jul 2, 1999 – Oct 24, 2005 · Oct 22, 2005 – Oct 21, 2011)
• The Cluetrain Manifesto Online
• The Cluetrain Manifesto Tenth Anniversary Edition
• Obedient Poodles for God and Country
• Ad Hominem @ Corante
• Gonzo Engaged
• The EGR List
• The Cluetrain List
• Tony Goodson Interviews Locke 2009
• Frank Paynter Interviews Locke 2003
• The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual
• Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices
• The Bombast Transcripts: Rants and Screeds of Rageboy