Submitted by rizzn on Wed, 08/13/2008 - 23:24.
In the Web 2.0 and social media community as much as anywhere else at the moment, the Olympics are a particularly hot typic, and it's brought up all sorts of off the wall discussions. Folks in the tech community, deservedly or not, always imagine themselves an expert on just about everything there is. This has a tendency to lead to tangential conversations and expert-like assertions that have little to no basis in fact or reality.
Leo Laporte, famed technology pundit and highly successful podcaster, quipped during the opening ceremonies: "I think we'll look back at this and say, this was when the American century ended and the Chinese century began."
I must admit, I was momentarily dazzled by the pretty lights, but Leo's statement jarred me back to reality. In the end, they were just a bunch of LEDs. A lot of LEDs, but the same sort of trivial electronic parts I had in my 30-in-one science kit as a child.