Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

Susan Crawford gives a talk about our inability to communicate outside this room

Imagine there's an easy-to-assemble toll booth. We drive into the gray world of the Land of Low Expectations. We're getting what the current providers give us.We can then go to the Land of Glittering Generalities that attempt to maintain the incumbents in power.

How do we get reason back? "Communications regulation should be about optimizing human communication." We have to persuade people that economic growth comes from new ideas, that the Internet is the greatest source of new ideas we've ever seen and that the telecom policy has to put the Internet at its core. We should claim that the Internet is different. "People are very uncomfortable when we say that, but we have to say it."

To help reason, we should be showing pictures. E.g., a chart of the market plummeting recently, and a chart of the weakness of the US economy. "If the rate economic growth in the US over the next 45 yrs were to increase by 0.5% per year, it could resolve all of the budget difficulties associated with the aging of the Baby Boom generation" with plenty left over. So, how do we continue growth in the US? "We need more meta-ideas about the generation of new ideas."

Aha! The internet - a source of new ideas." It's group-forming attributes and the chance to fail quickly are vital, too.

Policy outcomes: Universal service. Divestiture, separating services from content [i.e., the people who supply bit transport should not provide content.]

We need to professionalize, with better comparative data to show the effect of the Net on economy, the effect of Net neutrality, etc. And we need serious leadership.

We're running out of time. The future of the Internet hangs in the balance.

[SC for FCC!]