Two perspectives

Yesterday we mentioned Virtual Earth. Now Rick Segal points out two reviews of the interview of Bill Gates at Tech Show by Walt Mossberg (of WSJ fame), and I urge you to read both the one by Dan Gillmor and Tim O'Reilly.

Dwight Silverman blogged Dan Gillmor is formerly of the San Jose Mercury News and now a full-time champion of citizen journalism, and Tim O'Reilly is the founder of computer book publisher O'Reilly Media. Dan's got a reputation as a vocal critic of Microsoft. Tim's friendlier to Redmond. The differences in their accounts is striking, as well as nuanced.

Jim blogged After reading both of these entries, you can start adding on individual agendas. Tim O’Reilly and Dan Gillmor are both pretty well known so you can add what you know, what you’ve seen, etc, and layer it on as you decide what’s accurate, what’s bias, what’s whatever. It’s not for me to tell you, it’s an exercise for the reader."

The best idea is from Rick. "In my opinion, being able to read this kind of material with a critical eye, being fully aware of styles, history, agendas, etc, affords you training to make better decisions with data that is coming at you from all sides."

I thought it was very interesting to get both Dan and Tim's perspective on this matter. If you can't be there yourself, and I couldn't, having multiple opinions of what was said was very useful.