Thanks for the links, that's an interesting article and some good discussions.

IMO though, the article misses the boat by assuming that SEs are trying to put the most popular sites on the top of search results. I believe that Google and the other SEs still strive to give the most relevant results. People tend to focus too much on backlinks (which imply popularity) but unless you have a gigantic number of IBLs, content plays a huge role in determinig where a website is listed.

The article also makes SEO to be some kind of a "magic potion" when we know that the majority of SEO is common sense - valid html code, static links, site navigation, good content, etc.