The first speaker was Barry Schwartz, psychology professor from Swarthmore College, and author or “The Paradox of Choice,” a book we all got in our conference bag. (One guy who asked a question later said he’s already read it.) Basically, I’ll give you what I got out of his talk and the psycho-babble — I mean discussion — that followed. The Internet gives us too many choices. Check. How can Internet businesses help us? Help narrow our choices. Check. That’s what all the community services, for shopping, tagging, sharing, etc, actually do: as Esther says, filter or constrain our choices, without us having to be be involved in every silly little choice. Check. Therefore community is good, vertical search is good. Check.
Rock on Web 2.0.
(I took a bunch of photos, and I’d share a one or two here, but I can’t decide. No, actually, the Bluetooth in my RAZR phone won’t power on. Hmm, did I make the wrong phone choice?)
For a longer discussion about the “Choice” panel, here’s a good piece by Kevin Maney of USA Today, whom I met at PC Forum. I believe he filed an additional story or two from the event later as well.