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A project of the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program
Today, particularly on the Web, openness is supposed to be the watchword when it comes to communication. But, oddly enough, rules that govern much of our information currency are being written by regulatory agencies and lawmakers in closed private meetings, accountable to no one.
For the sake of our children, and for the competitiveness of the nation, America ought to be aggressively developing a new category of educational content, delivered using high-speed Internet access.
The New York Times recently ran an article (”High Speed for the Sparsely Wired,” July 9, 2010) reminding us that the September 30th deadline for awarding broadband stimulus grants is approaching. The Times article by Susannah G. Kim highlights the pending impact of federal stimulus money to extend high speed Internet access to rural areas.
Now that grant-winning [...]
We are facing a growing information divide that is leaving more and more people with less and less access to the basic information that helps them make choices about their jobs, families and communities. We have to have a national approach to the challenge of meeting these information needs. But first we have to answer a few core questions: How do we define the information needs of communities, and how do we measure them?
Last week FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski presented “The Third Way: A Narrowly Tailored Broadband Framework,” an approach that would reclassify broadband services in order to preserve the consensus on the FCC’s role in protecting Net Neutrality. In the wake of the Comcast ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, the third way approach would distinguish broadband transmissions from broadband “computing functionality”, and tailor Title II’s requirements to “the internet age”.
We’ve just published our first two information ecology case studies, which take a close look at the local conditions in Seattle and Scranton. When we started investigating these media ecosystems, we used the Knight Commission Report, “Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age,” as our guide.
Like all large-scale communications networks, the Internet does not work without governance. The battle of China versus Google tells us not that existing institutions have failed, but rather that new issues require new consideration of appropriate ways to assure the freedoms of the Internet.
Josh Stearns at SavetheNews.org has posted a helpful guide to Ten Policy Debates Shaping Journalism Right Now listing 10 legislative proposals, policy proceedings and inquiries taking place in Washington that could have a significant impact on the future of journalism in the United States. Here’s the list of 10 (go to SavetheNews.org for descriptions and [...]
The Federal Communications Commission started to put the National Broadband Plan into action at its April open meeting, where commissioners adopted a list of items ranging from reforming universal service to broadband survivability and cyber security.
The first item on the agenda was the Connect America Fund. As described by FCC staff, the fund is designed [...]
The Federal Communications Commission’s release last month of the National Broadband Plan holds profound implications for all of us who are working to expand opportunity in America. As the Internet becomes a gateway to democratic participation, economic opportunity, and human expression, it is critical to the future of our country—and our philanthropic missions—to ensure that everyone has high-speed, or “broadband,” access to an open Internet. That is a central goal of the federal government’s new plan, which, among other things, also seeks to expand the wireless spectrum for mobile devices and create a digital literacy corps to help more people use online tools.
Libraries, once considered a necessity, are now seen as a luxury. They are low-hanging fruit for budget pluckers, particularly at the state and local levels of government in communities across the country.
The traditional culture and ethics of professional journalism encourage journalists to hold themselves aloof from the communities they cover; to maintain objectivity through distance. Generally this means not voicing personal opinions on politics or controversial issues, and not engaging directly in civic processes. Sometimes even voting, campaign contributions, or speaking up at civic meetings are [...]
UPDATED 4/9/10: Both the Knight Commission report and the National Broadband Plan call for setting ambitious standards for broadband availability and a strong commitment to open networks. (The FCC cited the Knight Commission report in the Plan.) So we join the legions of others assessing the impact of the federal appeals court’s decision in the [...]
The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy has called for policymakers to “maintain the national commitment to open networks as a core objective of Internet policy” (recommendation 9). Finding a way to honor this commitment is one challenge facing the Federal Communications Commission and other policymakers as they chart a course for [...]
In Cecelia Kang’s Tech Post column today, Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf asks the Federal Communications Commission how it plans to use spectrum for mobile broadband and assure fairness and open access to networks for all. Cerf noted his concern that monopoly and quasi-monopoly systems of control historically have provided unequal access to network [...]
