Notes from the PdF

Friday
It's 4:30 and I've got the usual conference exhaustion....coupled with a slight hang-over I've had all day, and the lack of water (and lack of rest rooms), and you could say I'm feeling a little dehydrated...I've got 15 pages of notes and there's still one more panel to go before the cocktail party...

It's been a full day--with lots of heavy thinking. Hard to do with half a brain...

For the most part, everyone here's had very good things to say. Lawrence Lessig explaining the importance of unmooring videotaped debates from the limitations imposed by networks (yes, debates should be more of a public service vs. a profit-generating show for the networks.) Yet one of the most important things I like about what Lessig is saying is that we should not let Hollywood dictate how democracy should be--and that copyright, something that is important and helpful to hollywood, shouldn't necessarily control how political information gets disseminated (and debates are not just poltical information--but an important part of our political process. Political debates should be free, but Star Wars shouldn't necessarily be free. And, perhaps, there should be some exceptions in the use of video in the case of educational materials....)

Tom Friedman and Eric Schmidt (Google) were next, and it was a bit of a surreal dialogue. Schmidt sounded like he was making google out to be benevolent, but every time I read about them, I'm reading something that isn't all that benevolent. I did, however, and indirectly, learn more about why they purchased YouTube--basically, people respond to video differently than they do to words, or text, on a screen. It seems that by purchasing YouTube, it gives Google a ringside seat for observing the emotional responses of viewers to video...

There was more of a sense that Google is the Big Brother that Orwell *almost* envisioned. Orwell simply forgot about captialism in his worldview...

But back to Tom Friedman--who seems to be embodying the worst traits of the affluent middle aged white male. As he, once again, ad infinitum, told that tired old anecdote about the Paris cab driver wearing the bluetooth headset, and that, disappointedly, he and the cab driver didn't have a conversation on his ride to the hotel, all I could think of was "hmmm...heard this one before..."

That story is nothing more than the parable of a rich man out of touch with people, and making assumptions about the lot of regular people and interaction based on his own limited interaction with one individual in a cab...

I've just heard this one too many times on too many mainstream media programs and can no longer think of it as significant in any way. It's a moment over-exposed..

So then, why is Tom Friedman's one experience such a titual moment and diagnostic of the human condition in the internet? How can he understand anything about the real-life ways in which people are (or aren't) "connected" if there is always this barrier of class and priviledge between himself and the people he encounters? When Tom can speak, as I can, about the experience of a friend or a neighbor has with the internet and technology, I might begin to believe him...

As it is now, Freidman sounds like a man trapped in his profession--separated from people and knowing them only through stats and distant observation.

And if Freidman's point is that we need to learn to filter--and that people's perceptions of the 'net is that what they find on it is more accurate...well, that, too, isn't something I haven't heard before. Those are points of media literacy--something our schools will not teach (no money) and we must learn for ourselves.

In all fairness, Tom does know a great deal about a great deal--but even the most eloquent of speakers, and the most intelligent of individuals, can have blind spots...I believe this is one of Tom's big ole blind spots...

as it is now, I'm more inclined to believe Lee Rainey of the Pew Internet and American Life project, who's conducted some of the best surveys ever on the phenomenon. Lee's a fascinating guy, and the things he unpacks from his bag of tricks never ceases to enlighten even the highest of highbrows....

Note: Combing thru blog reports on PdF, I come across Josh Bernoff at Social Media Today on Friedman: Funny how privacy and reputation are somehow repeated in so many of these presentations. Everyone needs to develop a thick skin and skepticism. The trend of transparency and of online character assassination are two sides of the same coin. Get used to it. While I don't believe Friedman's hypothesis that now "everybody" has a blog(I know quite a few people who don't and never will)and all of us are one step away from being Paris Hilton, Bernoff's right about developing thick skins and skepticism. Otherwise, things may go horribly litigious which will only have a chilling effect.

Sunday: Taking a couple of days off due to catching a small "bug" in NYC, I'm sitting at my desk this dusky cool Sunday evening, going over my notes and reading other blog posts on the PdF. I've hit the page of notes on Yochai Benkler's talk, and remember how Dave Cohn and I kept talking about how are minds were totally blown by Benkler--who was so spot on when he said that "not everyone is a pamphleteer, but we are also not all intellectual lemmings."

Yet every time I listen to danah boyd (more here)I get a little depressed that I was ahead of the curve in social media in one sense, and behind the curve in another. danah mentions in her talk four points of online public spaces-- persistence, serchability (less privacy), replacability, and invisible audiences--I find myself nodding at these as they are things I disccovered from being online for so long (close to 10 years now). And she knows, like so many of us, that public space is disappearing--correction: has been disappearing for many, many years. The internet, for many of us, *is* our public space. True that it is more the experience of teens, but it is for a handful of us adults, too. Getting that thru to political types, as danah knows and has said, is a difficult thing indeed. They just don't seem to be able to *see* the space. If they can't see the space and understand the space, they will never reach young voters. And that's something we can't afford....


The most important thing I got out of the PdF though was that, out of all the conferences I've attended (and if you look at the sidebar, there's a bunch) this was the first group where there was not a whole bunch of demogoguery. Nobody was jumping up and down shouting "Citizen journalists rule!" or promoting any other hyperbolic ingredient in the Web 2.0 user-generated kool-aid. Rather, there was true, reasoned discussion...

Even on the Web 2.0: Cult of the Amateur? A Debate panel with Andrew Keen....

Jeff Jarvis said that he was approached to debate Keen at the PdF, and actually I was glad he didn't take up the offer. Jarvis on that panel might have taken away from a reasoned discussion on the topic--and, given Jeff's penchant for interrupting folks, Keen might not have been able to state why he wrote his particular polemic at this particular time...

But there is more to Keen than even he might have you think...(check this vid)

When Keen mentioned that he had taught Marxism, and that his book was a "subversion of a subversion," I got exactly what he is trying to do with his book. Keen lives in the land of Web 2.0. He's living among the kool-aid sippers, and he's not enjoying the trip. He is, indeed, a contrarian's contrarian--the most curmudgeonly curmudgeon. And my sense, clearly is that he has to be in order to be able to be heard over the happy-happy-joy-joy cacophany of the Silly Valley.

Hell, sombody *has* to do it--and it might as well be one of Their Own--a Berkeley Insider--which is Keen. Would that world listen to anybody else? Probably not.

Clay Shirky, however, provided a fine counterpoint to Keen, pointing out that the negative effects Keen discusses in his book are indeed real. (If we don't want to trust Keen because of his particular level of crankosity, then all we really need to do is read some Shirky--who, on occasion, points out the negatives, too. Albeit perhaps a bit more amusingly...)

Shirky doesn't believe we're looking at the death of our culture (as Keen believes), and that there are positives in this. The negatives, Shirky asserts, will be felt most strongly by those who have benefitted the most from the old system...

Someone, possibly Shirky, mentions Revenue: and massive positive supply-side shock. A


and "talent" online may be limited--but the thing is you don't have to have talent to have a conversation. And lots of blogging is conversation...

Then Craig Newmark--who amusingly pointed out how Keen equated children with livestock (and made everyone just crack up)--reminded all that "The Internet is just beginning. We're evolving the mechanisms." (talked to Craig a tiny bit earlier in the day--hope he's enjoying NYC :-) )

Robert Scoble also brought up how the people act as editors and monitors--and he's very right. Yet I find Scoble's assertion that *anyone* can become bigtime out here just from, say, blogging, isn't telling the entire story. If you really *do* want to do something with your blogging--you've got to find ways to get known (don't I know it...)

Keen finally mentioned how he beleives newspapser should be like utilities--and if they were not accountable to anyone, then they would be very different from the entities they are today (isn't this terribly Marxist of Keen? and isn't this, perhaps, what newspapers should be, rather than profit generating machines?)

Although Keen does sort of shoot himself a bit by claiming "The Internet is a wet dream" to which Rory O'Connor said "what?!?" and (to me) "you better write that one down..." it was an, um, seminal moment? (pardon the pun...)

Other important goings on:

Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry announce Tech President--an important initiative to get technology concerns on the table for the next election. Check the blog out here....

And a number of the folks I know from Boston blogging circles were there, including Steve Garfield making whole bunches of videos...and catches me and Andy Carvin and Kenyatta Cheese trying to snap the ever-moving Jarvis...

Halley Suitt (whose blog is, sadly, now readable by invitation only)

Andy Carvin (who's got a Tech President post with audio) who isn't in Boston any more, but that's how and where I know him...

and Aldon Hynes who's actually Connecticut, and was attending his *fourth* PdF! who introduced me to the very cool Ruby Sinreich whom I hope to get to correspond/talk with again...

Also ran into Mary Hodder who I hadn't seen in an age, and would really love to be able to catch up with....she's writing fantastic stuff these days...

JD Lasica who's always fun to bump into at cons...(and I've been bumping into him since my first con--BlogHer--back in '05)

Liza Sabater who I will one day have more than a five-minute chat with....

as well as Bob Cox who was there taking pics with a new Nokia...looking forward to them on Bob's Bob's Flickr photo album. Bob says "every time I see you, you're talking to somebody! you're like my 5 year old, you never seem to shut up..." yeah, that's true....if it wasn't for the social aspect of conferences, I might not go ;-)

and Jay Rosen, who finally found me when I was talking with Bob in the cortyard, I thought knew I was going to PdF on a press pass, but I guess I forgot to tell him... oops!

and finally Loren Feldman who does the kind of ragey rants I wish I could do...but, sadly, being a woman (and a middle-aged woman at that) I am verboten to perform... glad at least somebody can...and in such mellifluous Brooklyneese....


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