White House Has Vision of Open Internet, Talkie Boxes
BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, September 22 2009
Barack Obama made his first public comment on Julius Genachowski's proposed open Internet -- a.k.a. net neutrality -- regulations, in a speech announcing the White House's new national innovation strategy delivered in Troy, New York. Obama drew a connection between reversing the hard-hit town's economic woes and the need for an Internet upon which anyone can compete:
[A]nother key to strengthening education, entrepreneurship, and innovation in communities like Troy is to harness the full power of the Internet, and that means faster and more widely available broadband, as well as rules to ensure that we preserve the fairness and openness that led to the flourishing of the Internet in the first place. So today, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is announcing a set of principles to preserve an open Internet in which all Americans can participate and benefit. And I'm pleased that he's taking that step. That's an important role that we can play, laying the ground rules to spur innovation. That's the role of government -- to provide investment that spurs innovation and also to set up common-sense ground rules to ensure that there's a level playing field for all comers who seek to contribute their innovations.
That's some high-profile backup that Genachowski probably appreciates a great deal, as the inevitable battle against his plan begins. The New York Times reports that, after a polite pause, AT&T is now objecting to what looks to be Genachowski intention to apply neutrality regulations to the wireless space, something that, the company says, the tremendous data demands of the modern customer makes impracticable.
Beyond Internet policy, the national innovation plan -- jointly authored by the National Economic Council and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy -- includes mention of the White House's push to make government more open and more collaborative. The text suggests that, not surprisingly, they've made more progress with the former than the latter. On the openness front, the plan detailed concrete achievements: Data.gov, a Department of Veterans Affairs employee benefits forum, disclosure on executive branch employees and their salaries, and the launch of the federal IT dashboard. But the plan's section on collaboration limits itself to the president's call to make government more participatory.
The white paper also gives a glimpse at what the White House sees when it dreams about using technology to confront what it calls the "grand challenges" of the 21st century. Among the projects that the White House sees as potentially resulting from its renewed support and increased investment in innovation: "[a]utomatic, highly accurate and real-time translation between the major languages of the world – greatly lowering the barriers to international commerce and collaboration."