Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Tim Wu

Came up with the phrase net neutrality, consultant.

Starts with the story of a guy at Bell Labs, who invented magnetic recording. ATT squelched out because a survey showed that 2/3rd of phone calls were "indecent". They were afraid that people would stop using the phone if they thought they were being recorded.

Will the internet stay free? reviews history of other communication breakthroughs, all of which end up with a monopoly.

Positives: internet was designed with freedom in mind.

Negatives: economic principles and human nature. Most people want the bell curve, no one likes dissenters.

He seemed strangely unprepared for the questions. Most seemed obvious given his talk, but there was no evidence that he had rehearsed answers. In many cases it didn't even seem he had thought of the question.

He was carefully neutral on everything he said. Not strongly against anything. Not a boat rocker. Very concious that if he seemed anti business, or anti any one business, he would catch hell.

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