An end of innocence?

At Daylife this evening for a presentation by Jeff Jarvis, author of the book "What Would Google Do?" Basically, he carries on about principles for living derived from the omnipresent transparency facilitated by Google, Craigslist, and the rest. Not much revelation there, and then he opened the floor for some idea generation on the topic of a Google restaurant. A bunch of chipper ideas for cool applications of transparency and networking in the food service context gushed forth. "Drill down into menu items to show ingredients and where they come from," "provide data on popularity of dishes," etc.

Everyone was rather pleased with.themselves. But were they way out of touch with reality? Are we entering into an era of fewer gadgets and slower progress. Can we clever our way out of it? Maybe we can, to some extent. The Obama campaign is a good example of technology used well. I talked to one guy who was working on.a framework to help massive amounts of unemployed people connect. He was only just getting started, but maybe he can do some good. At the very least, he was tuned in.
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