I think adruu is thinking of Cory Doctorow. Ellis is probably most famous for his comic series Transmetropolitan that ran for five years. He's been know to advocate more independent, mainstream comics that delve into topics outside of the superhero genre -- right before he went back to work for Marvel doing men wearing spandex again. Caustic, cynical futurism and technology; his own work is right up the sex, drugs, and cybernetics alley when he's not doing secret agent/horror stuff.
He has a reasonably large online fanbase. I'd imagine they are going to be the prevalent voices on the new site, not so much the actual technologists and academics. That doesn't mean that there won't be some good speculation and conversation, only that I hold different expectations.