[UPDATE1] Blogging from the Politics Online Conference.

Today and tomorrow you can catch me at the Politics Online Conference. Politics online is equal parts politics, technology and geekery. Reading through the program, it seems like folks have just discovered Web2.0 -- I'm hoping the actual presentations and discussions will go far beyond the cliche. One of the problems in these sorts of conferences is that the tech parts are watered down for the wonks and the policy oversimplified for the geeks. It sure would be a breath of fresh air to attend a gathering that managed to solve the problem.

[UPDATE1] Well, we're off to a roaring start -- spending time to talk about and briefly explain such "new" technologies as RFID, IPv6, and UWB. I hate it when my fears of oversimplification are realized (that said, the speakers did do a good job of making the technological explanation accessible to folks who'd never heard of them before). My favorite myth thus far has been that hackers will be able to hack RFID tags to extract data from them that doesn't actually exist (e.g., that a hacker could figure out whether a product with an RFID tag was made using sweatshop labor -- as if there's some sort of "sweatshop" bit embedded on RFID tags). Obviously folks will hack these things (they already are), but not in those ways.