I read the article and think the point is deeper than that. I would summarize it like this:
Tim O'Reilly's business has changed from selling things (books, conferences) to selling ideologies ("Web 2.0", "government as a framework"). This is a relationship that goes both ways: the books and conferences provide crucial support for the ideologies he sells (the existence of a "Web 2.0" conference can be cited as proof that "Web 2.0" is a real thing), and the ideologies create demand for books and conferences as they spread.
The primary problem the author (Evgeny Morozov) has with this isn't that O'Reilly profits from it, but rather that the ideologies O'Reilly sells tend to provide corporate-friendly alternatives that are used to marginalize rising ideologies that could threaten existing power structures. Examples discussed:
- "Open source" as an ideology focused on the rights of the software developer, as opposed to the ideology it was explicitly designed to compete with, Richard Stallman's "free software" movement, which focused instead on the rights of the software user
- "Web 2.0" companies wanted to package up information about their users and sell it to the highest bidder; the ideology supported this by positioning it as a natural evolution of the Web rather than a major power shift
- "Government as a service" would involve taking major systems currently run by government and privatizing them, but covers this with a layer of techno-dust to avoid having to talk about the negative implications of privatization
Hence the comparison of O'Reilly to famed Republican spin architect Frank Luntz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz). Luntz has made a career selling policies to people they will hurt by packaging them up with attractive-sounding words. Morozov argues that O'Reilly is in the same business.
I also read it, and I think you summarize it well. I'd like to add that the author's main aim seems to be in revealing a strong technocratic tendency underlying O'Reilly's thought. The technocracy is shown for example in the naive assumption that political decisions can be calculated algorithmically with enough data and intelligent algorithms. According to the author, O'Reilly hides the political claim that small government is good behind technological newspeak about governments providing only the essential APIs for the private sector to build on. In coining new terms for old ideas he is ignoring the vast literature of political and philosophical thought discussing these matters and gaining the support of hackers for a political agenda. And, most importantly, dismissing tough ethical and political decisions by claiming that government is some kind of an optimization problem.
I'm not sure if he convinced me regarding O'Reilly specifically (haven't read O'Reilly enough), and I agree with others about the repetition and bad style ("crazy talk"?). But some actual thoughts were hidden in there.
I wasn't able to wade through it all either, but I thought it was clear the point was that O'Reilly bends thought and attitudes in Silicon Valley through PR and marketing of memes and buzzwords.
To the OP, this has had negative consequences, and he goes through them point by point.
