Daily Digest: PdF '08 Day Two -- Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely.
BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, June 24 2008
This is Day Two of the 2008 Personal Democracy Forum and we’ll be (mostly) devoting the Daily Digest to a recap of what’s going down at the conference, being discussed in the halls, and heating up the back channels. We’ll return to our regular digest format tomorrow.
Visual presentation virtuoso Larry Lessig at a text-only mid-morning press conference here at PdF '08: "I'm a little lost because I don't have slides."
Google evangelist and wise guy Vint Cerf: "PowerPoint corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely."
(Yes, we know Larry uses Keynote in his presentations. But still, that's a great line.)
Bad weather kept keynoter Elizabeth Edwards away from New York City in body but she was still able to appear at PdF '08 via Skype, which preformed remarkably well. The upside of Elizabeth staying in North Carolina? Her husband, John, popped into view of Elizabeth's laptop camera [here's a photo] and stuck around to say a few words. The New York Times' Katharine Seelye reports on the tech-focused discussion between Elizabeth and the PdF crowd.
NPR's Sunday Soapbox "field vlogger" Jacob Soboroff conducted video interviews with MySpace IMPACT's Lee Brenner, the Huffington Post's Arianna Huffington and Open Left's Matt Stoller. Also in NPR land, Soapbox's senior producer Davar Ardalan responds to Jay Rosen's take on notes on "semi-pro" journalism presented at a PdF panel yesterday morning and posted to TechPres last night, saying that digital integration "brings with it many philosophical questions about editorial control and the ethical rules we have all been trained to follow."
Over on the tech blog ArsTechnica, Julian Sanchez responds to yesterday's discussion over the modern media's "fake neutrality," to borrow a phrase from Arianna.
Silicon Alley responds to McCain advisor Mark Sohoo's defense yesterday of his candidate's relationship with the Internet. The Guardian UK also has coverage of the session under the in-no-way-judgmental headline "Republicans Admit Obama is Winning the Online Battle." Ooh, this just in: source material -- video of the exchange between Mark and John Edwards' online staffer Tracy Russo that has had people talking since.
CNN's iReport has a station set up here and the conference and has gone live with interviews and coverage with attendees.
Virtual reality pioneer Mark Pesce gave a keynote this morning on "hyperpolitics -- American style" that both Twitter and room tone seemed to indicate was very well-received. If the reporting on the speech strikes you as slightly fuzzy, that's because I unfortunately arrived at the talk where there was only about three minutes left; no worries, though, because Mark has generously posted the full text of his presentation.
PdF's Alison Fine has great coverage of Doug Rushkoff talk on "The New Renaissance" and Morely Winegard's presentation on the civic engagement of the millennial generation.
PC World covers the unveiling of Internet for Everyone, a new Free Press-engineered push for universal broadband launched at PdF '08 this morning. Nancy Scola (hey, that's me) has a quick guide to the the bite-sized arguments made by the project's supporters, from Vint Cerf to Writers Guild East president Michael Winship to TechPres contributor David All.
CNET's Caroline McCarthy reports on Larry Lessig's exhortation to the PdF crowd to not fall into the "four-year trap" of keeping a close watch on politics and politicians only when election time rolls around.
Nancy Scola (again, me) reflects upon a session featuring Mayhill Fowler where the OffTheBus contributor called for bloggers to agree to some "code of the road" that creates a safe, off-the-record space for press.
ThePoint.com's Alex Steed is doing some granular liveblogging of the conference.
Of course, there's more going on than we can possibly capture. So check out the Twitter stream tag
ged #pdf2008 on Summize.
UPDATE: UpTakeVideo has video of Dabble's Mary Hodder and PdF/Change's Josh Levy performing "The Twitter Song" on stage at Lincoln Center this afternoon. Words fail me...