Synthetic Consensus?

The Register Andrew Orlowski can be an asshole, and he was in high form when he wrote this criticism of the unfolding O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference (which I wish I was attending). The big man himself, Tim O’Reilly, took the time out to dismiss this piece as both a flame and fluffy journalism, which it most certainly is. But, as with most provocateurs, Orlowski has a point somewhere in his heap of snarky prose.

ETCon may not be as evil as Orlowski makes it out to be, but there’s something to be said for his assertion that “it’s hard to imagine that this won’t break down into a consensual circle-jerk.” Or rather that the conference was from the start, as he puts it, akin to the “world of blogdom [where many of the organizers and speakers hang out], which relies heavily on its own, synthetic consensus.” When you get lots of smart, like-minded people in once place, like ETCon, two things tend to happen: people have lots of neat ideas, and most of those ideas go uncriticized. Call it the nature of conferences, but who’s going to pay $1000+ just to attend and dissent? Of course, the worthwhile ideas that make it out of the conference will then be up for jabs, so perhaps things balance out. All I know is that for a bunch of networked geeks, the blog clique sure likes hanging out in person. Does that get more good thinking done, or just a lot of backslapping?