Google will become the Census, and then become the ultimate political demographer, re-drawing federal and state electoral districts every ten years.

Not quite done listening, but one quick comment on the Wikipedia notability debate. While anyone with a regular show on as august and venerable a website as bloggingheads easily passes any such requirement, one thing Will didn't think of when he makes his "Even if I'm not notable, what's the harm?" argument is: meta-tags. After all, Will's page doesn't just take up room in the great pool of Wikipedia—which, contra Siva, probably isn't really that big an issue server-space-wise—it also takes up space on the meta-tag lists of "American Non-Fiction Writers" and of "Video Bloggers". Maybe Will disagrees, but I think that if every video blogger in the world had a Wikipedia entry that was meta-tagged as such, that page would be utterly useless. And Will's Metatag list is actually tiny: Tyler Cowen, as a one-click-away for instance, is listed as: 1962 births | Living people | American academics | American bloggers | American economists | American food writers | American libertarians | American political writers | Libertarian theorists | George Mason University alumni | George Mason University faculty | Harvard University alumni All of these seem perfectly reasonable (although "food writer" is arguably borderline), but again, multiply all that by the number of people

Quoting Jesse F: Not quite done listening, but one quick comment on the Wikipedia notability debate. While anyone with a regular show on as august and venerable a website as bloggingheads easily passes any such requirement, one thing Will didn't think of when he makes his "Even if I'm not notable, what's the harm?" argument is: meta-tags.

After all, Will's page doesn't just take up room in the great pool of Wikipedia—which, contra Siva, probably isn't really that big an issue server-space-wise—it also takes up space on the meta-tag lists of "American Non-Fiction Writers" and of "Video Bloggers". Maybe Will disagrees, but I think that if every video blogger in the world had a Wikipedia entry that was meta-tagged as such, that page would be utterly useless.

I actually found Siva's explanation persuasive that if (for instance) every video blogger in the world had a page, it would cost Wikipedia more. Of course, it's true that it would render meta-tags more useless, but for all but the most specific categories they are. For instance, the category: 1962 births has over 4,000 pages in it. Or for an example of a extremely useless meta-tag try "living people." It has nearly 300,000 pages.

You can reduce the access to the personal profile that you present (unknowingly,) by blocking and/or reducing access to you as a demographic. There are lots of ways to do this, but I'm currently pleased with a Firefox extension called NoScript. http://noscript.net/ Not only does it speed up page loads by blocking Flash apps, but it allows you to block java script loads and redirects. I was surprised to see how many of the data collection instruments are google products.
My thanks to Bob and the bloggingheads megacorporation for being among the minority of websites that aren't collecting data surreptitiously.

I've always said bhTV needs more Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken!

Quoting Xelgaex: I actually found Siva's explanation persuasive that if (for instance) every video blogger in the world had a page, it would cost Wikipedia more. Of course, it's true that it would render meta-tags more useless, but for all but the most specific categories they are. For instance, the category: 1962 births has over 4,000 pages in it. Or for an example of a extremely useless meta-tag try "living people." It has nearly 300,000 pages.

I'm not convinced: Will's page, including 20k photo, has to be what, 40k? Even multiplying that by a million people only costs you 40 gigs of server space, which is pocket change. And although users downloading pages does cost bandwidth, "non-notable" pages would be, by definition, the least frequently downloaded pages on Wikipedia. So I just don't see where the direct cost comes in, and still think that it's more an issue of usability and general Apollonian instinct. And while "living people" is indeed useless as a meta-tag—at least as far as an aggregate listing goes—I don't think a list of the 4,000 "notable" 46-ish-year-olds in the world is useless at all—it's a big number, but not a totally unworkable one, and it's a hell of a thing to browse the first page

The problem with Will's wikipedia page is all the quotes from people saying how great he is. I actually like hearing what Will has to say but if I wasn't lazy I would find a way to make his wikipedia page more informative and less gushy. I am speaking of course of the quotes from Ryan Blitstein and David Brooks. Maybe if it was balanced with more information about what his critics say about him. He wouldn't be a real libertarian if he didn't say something at some point that someone didn't like.

I agree with the notion of metering the WWW. Yet, wouldn't the short term result be a drop in internet use, once consumers stopped downloading expensive products, and until producers lowered prices to attract consumers again. Also, wouldn't this lead to debates about what prices were fair, and the inequalities of service and products? Wouldn't some consumers resort to desperate measures to regain their former level of enjoyment? For instance, might not bjkeefe resort to prostitution and selling drugs to support his bhTV habit?

Mark Twain's "What Is Man?" is available for free download at: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/70

Glad to hear some conversation about Net Neutrality. I'd like to hear more (possibly Siva paired with Conn Carroll?). One thing that Siva touched on but didn't expand upon was something I'd really like to hear more about: why does Google support Net Neutrality? Is it as simple as worries about YouTube and all of their web services (Gmail, Docs, etc.) being throttled? Or is there something more subtle? A good conversation overall, if a bit unfocused. I'd like to hear another hour.

Quoting Baltimoron: I agree with the notion of metering the WWW. Yet, wouldn't the short term result be a drop in internet use, once consumers stopped downloading expensive products, and until producers lowered prices to attract consumers again. Also, wouldn't this lead to debates about what prices were fair, and the inequalities of service and products? Wouldn't some consumers resort to desperate measures to regain their former level of enjoyment?

Very funny. That free market Machiavellian scheme...

For instance, might not bjkeefe resort to prostitution and selling drugs to support his bhTV habit?

Hey, don't mess with my friend Brendan! He is not even around to defend himself! Bully!

Jesse F: That's an interesting argument you present in favor of notability. I've always been one of those people who can't stand the fascist-delete Wikipedians, and have never been persuaded by storage space arguments. Your meta-tag case is better, at least at first glance. Seems to me one way to deal with excessively long lists would be to offer more ways for readers to display them; e.g., in addition to alphabetical listings, of, say, people born in 1962, how about most-viewed, most-edited, most-searched-for, most-linked-to, highest-Google-ranking, etc.?

Quoting Baltimoron: For instance, might not bjkeefe resort to prostitution and selling drugs to support his bhTV habit?

But by Siva's argument, I am the one that should be treasured, since I am providing content. Its value is of course debatable, but the principle here is that without people like me, there would no reason for other people to use the Internet, right? There's the second obvious retort, which is that the sum total of all bandwidth consumed by me uploading text, let alone disk space to store it, is dwarfed by just one Ann Althouse diavlog. Just to pick a name at random. There's a third argument, too, which speaks to the value of the commenters in general. I'd be willing to bet tall dollars that BH.tv makes far more money from the Google text ads displayed in the forums than they did when they tried to run pre-roll ads before the diavlogs. And, the more people mouthing off, the more likely it is that other people will look at the pages. In the end, the global media juggernaut relies heavily on the peanut gallery. The diavlogs are, from a commercial point of view, nothing more than the seeds

He's back! Here's the throne, Sir.

Quoting bjkeefe: Jesse F:
Seems to me one way to deal with excessively long lists would be to offer more ways for readers to display them; e.g., in addition to alphabetical listings, of, say, people born in 1962, how about most-viewed, most-edited, most-searched-for, most-linked-to, highest-Google-ranking, etc.?

That wouldn't be too difficult to implement and definitely has its merits as a solution—more than my scarlet letter, in any case—but it might lead to the level of gamesmanship that Siva talks about with Google, sans multi-billion-dollar referee. That could get ugly, fast. But every solution has its side effects, and I can't say those would necessarily be any worse than notability squabbling... P.S. Here's a funny if tendentious talk about "The Great Failure of Wikipedia". Some great anecdotes in there, even if I don't agree with every conclusion: http://www.archive.org/details/20060...cott-wikipedia

Quoting Jesse F: That wouldn't be too difficult to implement and definitely has its merits as a solution—more than my scarlet letter, in any case—but it might lead to the level of gamesmanship that Siva talks about with Google, sans multi-billion-dollar referee. That could get ugly, fast.

Well ... I don't know if I buy that. The various display options I suggested would mostly come from simple counters within Wikipedia's database, and the other one is just straight from Google's data. And in the end, who really cares what their Wikipedia page says about them? Besides Amy Alkon, I mean.

But every solution has its side effects, and I can't say those would necessarily be any worse than notability squabbling...

Fair enough.

P.S. Here's a funny if tendentious talk about "The Great Failure of Wikipedia". Some great anecdotes in there, even if I don't agree with every conclusion:

http://www.archive.org/details/20060...cott-wikipedia

I've heard that talk before, but thanks for recommending it. I am happy to second your recommendation.

Google's support of net neutrality is a no brainer for the reason you stated. Net neutrality has a secondary benefit to Google as well: it is easier to achieve world domination over a neutral net than a feudal one.

Quoting themightypuck: Google's support of net neutrality is a no brainer for the reason you stated. Net neutrality has a secondary benefit to Google as well: it is easier to achieve world domination over a neutral net than a feudal one.

That sounds right to me, TMP. Of course, there's a nicer way to spin it; e.g., if your goal is to index and make accessible the world's information, you would like to have as few barriers as possible. I guess I'm kind of a Google fanboy, but I continue to think that their founding interests still lie along this noble aspiration. Sure, they're happy to make a profit. Sure, there is the reality that once a company gets big enough, pure business types begin to play important roles. And sure, there is no getting away from inevitable compromises that present once the company gets big enough. But I still believe "don't be evil" is not just an empty slogan. Even if I didn't, I'd still be happy that Google came along to play a big part in breaking Microsoft's stranglehold on personal computing, and I am delighted that they are opposing the big telcos, no matter what their underlying motives. I don't

One big problem with what Comcast did, as this handy synopsis of the FCC decision makes clear, is that they throttled the connections of even occassional users of P2P applications, while leaving other bandwidth hogs alone. That did not really come out in the diavolg.