It's fascinating for me because I've never really been a tech guy who understands the nuts and bolts (or ones and zeroes) of how the technology works. I operate more on the shiny object principal - mostly new things that catch my attention. But over time I have came to recognize and understand how these new technologies are having an impact on all of our lives and, yes, how its changing politics.

As we explore this new era not of broadcast politics but of mediated politics, one obvious areas of interest to me is how we continue explore the realms and intended uses of social networking (a pet topic of mine). Several members of the Facebook team and of MySpace are around today, as is the creator of the Million Strong for Barack Obama Facebook group, and the Obama/MySpace dust-up has been discussed several times today (PDF/TechPresident broke the story).

Earlier today, noted social-networking expert Danah Boyd noted that one of the main properties of this new mediated public sphere was persistence. Persistence not as a personal characteristic but how everything - drunken photos, bad poetry, and high school make-out mix playlists - will be around basically forever. The once clear divide between public and private lives has become blurred and there's an understandable concern. But for those of us who have grown up and come of age in this digital world, there's an awareness of this, but also a relatively non-chalant attitude among many. I think its because there's a kind of Mutually Assured Destruction about it, because almost everyone has so much information out in the public sphere, on MySpace or Facebook, that kind of cancels it all out (truly bad stuff of course always being the exception).

Now there will be more examples of those whose social networking profiles get them in trouble (see the Wonkette Facebook section) but I think the issue is more akin to evolve like the issue of previous marijuana use has in politics today. A decade a half ago questions about smoking pot helped take down a Supreme Court nominee and led to the famous Bill Clinton answer of "I smoked but didn't inhale." Fast forward to the 2004 Election, where several candidates were willing to raise their hand and admit they'd used marijuana causing little stir. I think we're headed for something similar with all the "embarrassing" stuff from your past that lives forever somewhere on the tubes.

In fact, counter to the fears that your online past will come back to haunt you, eventually I think we'll come to expect those those running for office to have social networking profiles dating back for years as a sign of authenticity in our political candidates. They'll show that these are real people, with a past, and friends, and offer an almost voyeuristic look at the evolution of someone's life before they stepped into the public spotlight.

Just my two cents. Other conference events so far included Stoller giving a great quick overview of the origins of the progressive netroots, Josh Marshall sitting on a panel with MoveOn and MySpace, and Phil de Vellis is basically being treated like a user-generated content rock star. Later today the Internet folks from a bunch of major presidential campaigns, D and R, are going to gather to discuss the latest developments in the 2008 campaign field and I'll do my best to post about it.

And if any MyDDers are in NYC tomorrow, register to join us for the the PDF UnConference, with MyDDer Nancy Scola.