New new echo chamber

Posted in: Miscellanea on Apr 25

Some the blog coverage of O'Reilly's Emerging Technology Conference is fantastic (e.g., kottke, BoingBoing, Matt Webb, complete list).

But reading though it all I feel a bit like I'm caught in a neophiliac feedback loop. No wonder--most of the blogs I regularly read are covering the conference or pointing to coverage of the conference.

The problem with a neophiliac feedback loop is that it amplifies new ideas regardless of their other merits (or, I guess, demerits). Everything is just peels of squealing coolness.

And that's the point of these conferences in a way. Synergy and all that. But amid the noise and, no doubt, distortion, the skeptic in me can't help but wonder: Which of these ideas really has legs? Which will we be talking about in two years or five years?

Posted by Gene Smith on Apr 25, 2003

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Maciej Ceglowski says...

Actually, the irony of the Emerging Technology conference is that nothing was new. All of the coolest presentations - biological computing, nanotechnology, Alan Kay's keynote, online communities - covered material that has been around for years and years and years.

There seems to be a pattern in computer science where a cool idea needs to bob to the surface many times before it finally takes off. Just the names change. So I think most of the things covered this year will reappear again in the future, over and over, until their time finally arrives.

That's not to criticize your observation on a feedback loop - it's a little disconcerting to hear myself in an echo chamber, and with a comparatively small number of participants at that.

But the ideas themselves, this year, are strictly retro.

Posted on Apr 26, 2003

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Posted by Gene Smith on Apr 25, 2003. Before this there was Regarding Dubya. Next up is Facets + Flash.

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Gene Smith is a principal with nForm, one of Canada's leading user experience consulting firms. He writes about information architecture, interaction design, community, the web and other such topics. More >

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