Fur Flies at Gnomedex By Kathleen Craig Wired News
14:15 PM Jul, 03, 2006 http://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,71302-0.html SEATTLE -- A Second Life employee told Robert Scoble he was banned from its virtual world this weekend, following a presentation at the sold out tech conference in which the newly ex-Microsoft blogger publicly allowed his 12-year old to take over his account as part of the show. "You're toast," an exasperated Second Life employee told the Scoble father and son, live "in-world" and projected onscreen above the conference stage, at a lunchtime podcasting event that featured a look into Scoble's Second Life, as his son Patrick worked on a building project using the adult Scoble's account, in violation of company policy. The clash was one of the wilder moments here at Gnomedex, an annual A-list tech conference sponsored by Lockergnome. The conference espouses a bottom-up, audience-driven approach, making it an unpredictable if not outright chaotic affair. Scoble's public scolding and apparent banishment followed on the heels of a controversial keynote on Friday by Sen. John Edwards, an appearance that sparked fears the event would be hijacked in service of the North Carolina Democrat's presumed presidential run. Those anxieties played out anticlimactically as Edwards, who has been blogging and podcasting himself for the last year and a half, made some general remarks about blogging's political potential in a whirlwind visit that -- despite the speaker's protests to the contrary -- bore all the hallmarks of a campaign stop . Edwards, John Kerry's vice presidential running mate in the pair's failed 2004 bid, appealed to the software developers and bloggers in the room to help find ways to educate and engage voters. He also frankly addressed sometimes harsh audience questions about how politicians can stop sounding so "non-human," as well as net neutrality and the integrity of voting machine technology. "What I am here to ask you is to help make this process less top down, to democratize this democracy we're supposed to be living in," he said. Despite the keynote and a succession of high-profile session leaders, it was indeed the audience that stole the show. Conference attendees on hand to talk with Edwards and other discussion leaders were some of the most passionate people in the technology world -- software developers, bloggers and tech enthusiasts inspired partly by ideas like the long tail and the attention economy. These are the upstarts challenging the biggest players in technology. Discussion leaders included Blake Ross, of Firefox fame, whose presentation was upstaged by audience member and Scripting News publisher Dave Winer, who challenged Ross to explain how Mozilla was going to avoid becoming "just as evil" as Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Edwards was similarly treated to a voluble interchange with the crowd. Gnomedex organizer Chris Pirillo encouraged attendees to keep the discussion on track by talking with the senator about technology -- "the geek issues" -- rather than politics. Pirillo noted, "in the last election we found out about (the power of) web logs," then asked what Edwards and session attendees thought would be the influential technology tools in upcoming elections. However, Gnomedex attendees clearly wanted to talk politics, and some of the leading issues of the day -- government surveillance, electronic voting machines and net neutrality -- got thorough workouts. One conference attendee said he was uncomfortable with how easy it would be for the government to abuse information gathered through such methods as the Swift network, used to look at citizen's financial records and internet use. The Bush administration says Swift is necessary "to catch terrorists." The set-up gave Edwards the perfect lead-in for what will undoubtedly be a key talking point for the next Democratic nominee for president, whoever that turns out to be. "The greatest danger to all of our privacy and freedom comes if we can't protect our liberties, in this environment when you've got a president who believes he's above the law," he said. Perhaps the biggest round of applause from the room came after one person cited the need for verifiable paper vote receipts and open source style access to the code vote machines use, in order to ensure such machines are not hacked during elections. Pirillo acknowledged he might have been "a little naïve," to hope the session would be non political. But he said "since Edwards does videocast," he thought it would make for an interesting session. In an interview, Winer said he was frustrated that Edwards was the sole politician at the conference, and not balanced by a Republican. "However you rationalize it, if you're sitting in the room where a political candidate is talking to you, it's political," he said. As for judging the potential strength of Edwards in a presidential run, blog pioneer Winer noted dryly that Edwards was a perfect TV candidate before delivering the punchline: "My belief is that we're in the waning influence of the TV candidate." Scoble followed up his very public scolding from Linden Lab's Beth Goza by podcasting her explanation of just why Second Life is so concerned about keeping children away from the adults-only version of the world. Aside from concerns about lawsuits like the one recently filed by a parent against MySpace, the publisher of Second Life wants to keep teenagers safely tucked away in the Teen Grid, away from the sometimes extremely adult content in the non PG rated regions of the online world. Scoble, one of Second Life's best-known fans, also published a detailed mea culpa on his blog, apologizing to Linden Labs, and acknowledging that he led his son into breaking the rules. So far, the public contrition may be working, unless Goza's ban simply hasn't yet been implemented: Scoble told Wired News that as of the Monday after the conference, his account does in fact still work. ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 antunes at uh dot edu Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post. _____________________________ MEDIANEWS mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
