IS2K4 Conference Skepticism Articles
A little while ago, I noticed John Palfrey wrote, about the votes, bits, bytes conference and a hypothesis that blog campaigns "created a larger, activated at-critical-mass-constituency, and lots of VOICE" (my emphasis)
I look forward to testing out this and other hypotheses at the Internet & Society conference in a few weeks.
I thought to myself, that testing involves discovering whether something is true or not, of what is correct and what is not. I hope that testing is fact being done.
As almost nobody cares what I think, I will merely attempt to perform a public blog-service and increase the PageRank and popdex and other measures of the following skeptical Andrew Orlowski articles:
Kerry net chief: cool software doesn't win elections
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/10/votesbitsbytes_kerry_chief_post_mortem/
He derided net evangelists who believed that the answer was 'let's come up with new ways of talking!'
"The belief was 'let's get 5,000 people out there and they'll talk to each other. but to put a president in office we need to get people organized and trained." In the end, he said, a field organization was far more valuable than blog blather.
[n.b. cross-reference to David Weinberger's report]
In net politics, it's God vs Dog
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/10/votesbitsbytes_net_religion/
[n.b. cross-reference again to David Weinberger's report]
It is a sobering thought that my post here probably has more of an influence via ranking algorithms than audience :-(.
By Seth Finkelstein | posted in cyberblather | on December 10, 2004 11:59 PM (Infothought permalink) | Followups
I attended about half of Friday's conference to see if it would erode my skepticism. It didn't. Hoder's blogging and the democratic promise of meetups may exist on the same continuum, but the cab fare from one to the other will kill ya. I think it is a matter of when, not if, big business and big-party politics co-opt the meetup.com model. As for bloggers blogging about the signifance of their blogging, does anyone still believe cyberspace will bring those "weary giants of flesh and steel" to their knees?