With Friends Like These, Who Needs Strangers?

Bumped into the one, the only, Marc Canter who, as far as I know, has the most "friends" within Orkut-space: 433 at last count, and who, as far as I could recall, I was meeting for the very first time at that moment (even though we're connected as "friends" in Orkut-space). I actually didn't even recognize him at first; but he seemed to recognize me right away, letting out a hearty "hey!" and shaking my hand vigorously. Told me he was putting together a party this evening. Before we could talk more, he got pulled away for a moment by someone else who wanted to tell him something.

When he came back, he says, "I keep meaning to get up there to Vancouver some time, maybe soon, there's this guy who's doing a project up there ---" and I cut him off.

"Vancouver?" I ask.

He looks at me, puzzled.

"I don't live in Vancouver. I live here in town, in La Jolla," I tell him.

His jaw drops, his face blank. Think of the database activity furiously going on in his head: searching through those 433 "friends", trying to place me. . . trying . . . failing . . . nope, nothing. Face blank.

Classic Orkut moment.

Digital Democracy

Half the audience is busy typing away, lots of people blogging what's going on here. So far the sessions have been tended to be a bit boosterish about the marvels of technology (the digital being more emphasized than the democracy, although there have been some interesting exceptions).

Best panel comment so far today, in my opinion, was from Jay Rosen on the journalism panel. A question from the audience: "What does digital democracy look like?" Jay Rosen came back with (I'm paraphrasing): "I think a better question is, what does a democratic culture look like, and how do we use digital technology to improve that culture?" Thank you Jay for saying that.