One of our fellow analysts, Tom Austin (who will be delivering the Web Innovation keynote with chairs David Smith and Gene Phifer), had the opportunity to hear David Weinberger speak at a recent conference. One of the key messages that Weinberger delivered was that sites, like Wikipedia, that let the readers draw their own conclusions by reading not just the content but also earlier versions, the discussions and the comments (and ratings) of others will be adjudged (perhaps) as more valuable than sites (he pointed at the NYTimes) that try to position themselves as the definitive authority, that acts to reinforce its authority and (tries to) dictate conclusions. The latter type of site is (in his opinion) going to decline dramatically

There is some wisdom in what he says but we believe that fundamentally, most people are lazy. They don't want to think about the answer and draw their own conclusion; they just want to know the authority's recommendation. This will be an Interesting item that we can debate.

There is a lot of interesting material in Weinberger's work so listening to him (as an authority figure? or just as a stimulus to thinking about the issues and drawing one's own conclusions?) should be very interesting.

Weinberger’s keynote will be on Friday, September 23 at 8:30 am. The conference opening keynote will be at 8:30 on Wednesday, September 19th.

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