Will bloggers armed with cheap, high-tech tools change the news, or will the age-old rule that the closer you get to the powerful, the harder it is for you to criticize them, hold? This week at the Democratic convention we're seeing a new model in action, the Qik-powered videoblogger, but the results are still unclear.

I spent a few minutes in the future last night, having a late dinner at an Italian restaurant in Santa Monica with Robert Scoble of FastCompany.tv and Loic le Meur of the start-up Seesmic. Both of them are tech pioneers who are working in the emerging world of the world live web. And when they say live, they don't mean simply the part of the web that gets updated often, otherwise known as the blogosphere and the news-sphere. They mean the direct streaming of live events onto the web, along with live feedback from audiences that are highly networked.