The echo meme
: I’m now sitting in an ad hoc press conference kind of thing with Tim O’Reilly and Rael Dornfest, the program head for ETech. As I walk in, they’re discussing the left-leaning echo chamber issue from yesterday’s Digital Democracy day (see posts below).
O’Reilly said that he sees absolutely no connection between this technology and the left. It will be used by all sides of all issues.
Doc Searls, who was on the conference committee, said they tried to find some conservatives to join in but had difficulty finding them.
O’Reilly conceded that conferences are put together by networks and this network of who-knows-whom happens to lean that way and thus finds those people.
Another member of the committee said that in talking to conservatives, they are “very happy with talk radio” and aren’t as deseparate for new things as the liberals, thus liberals are using this stuff more.
They dealt with it directly. That’s what’s great about both this world and O’Reilly himself: Openness and immediacy.
: Corrected. I thought Micah Sifry was there; I uncharacteristically took notes on this on paper and I have the world’s worst handwriting and the world’s second-worst memory (so I can’t remember who was there). Sorry.
