Satan is on My Friends List...

Today I was invited to a Black Hat Briefings webcast that included the intriguing topic "Satan is on My Friends List - Attacking Social Networks." Naturally I registered; but that's not what this post is about. That title just sort of got me thinking about contrasting worldviews and how they relate to those frames Nat mentioned in his post on the enterprise the other day.

While both O'Reilly and Black Hat conferences attract alpha hackers, their editorial points of view tend to occupy opposite ends of some kind of Internet worldview continuum. Whether from the influence of their founding personalities or some kind of Sebastopol vs. Las Vegas center of gravity, they both represent what is possible but they tend toward different visions of that possibility. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but for what its worth, I've attended both Black Hat and O'Reilly conferences and can't recall Satan making a single appearance in an O'Reilly conference program.

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