What does an algorithm think?

Sunday, April 20, 2008 by Dave Winer.

The only person who knows what it means to be on Techmeme is a former roommate of the person who has always been at the top of every list ranking popularity on Techmeme. I'd rather be judged by people, not code, but if we're supposed to accept the judgment of code, there should be more than one person who knows how it works. And when it says consistently that the author's friend is #1, that's kind of fishy, murky, two bit, Karl Rove. Alberto Gonzalez, third world, banana republic, cheap.  

Further, to call most of the posts that show up on Techmeme "tech" is a bit of a stretch. Most of the authors don't know the first thing about technology, never took a computer science class, have never written code, and don't admit that understanding tech is a prerequisite for writing about it. Further, most of the articles that get linked to by Techmeme aren't about technology, they're about who's buying who, or who's on top of who, or advertising, bubbles, PR, linkbait, etc. 

BTW, I temporarily turned off Techmeme so no one can say I'm trolling for links from Techmeme.