Cook’s Collaborative Edge

Today I wrote on my list: I am increasingly more skeptical that like NTIA the FCC will do ANYTHING that could be interpreted to be in the national interest as opposed to the corporate interest.

Count me with Erik Cecil in the hope that events may render the FCC irrelevant. Sheesh what will it take for us to learn?

Erik Cecil Replied with the best piece I have ever seen him write:

Gordon,

The FCC is already irrelevant * and * it is not going away. This is not unfortunate because we are in transition. Power is leaky and must go to the edges. The institutions of government and of law, however, have only begun to transition from indirectly serving people to directly serving them. This transition, however, is also already well underway.

I suspect that the tectonic nature of this shift has actually surprised the Obama team. I am sure there are those who thought they could contain and direct it. Not so. They opened up extraordinary energy pent up behind decades if not eons of government serving themselves and their cronies far better than serving everyone. No government on this planet can stop it; they are being carried by it.

The deepest truth I can detect of the matter is that the institutions of the last few centuries are no longer relevant. They lack moral authority and have zero public trust. Their actual power is waning, not growing. In order to remain relevant, government must regain its moral and ethical standing. It cannot do this by continuing to act as if the old ways and old methods are relevant.

Obama, therefore, is straddling a chasm whose breadth and depth grows daily. It is the chasm of dissatisfaction with concentrated wealth, inner circles of power, cronyism in any form no matter how polished and refined, and anything that smacks of centralized authority. He gains authority by giving back to the people actual powers to choose and influence, but his advisors and ancient interests backing him are terrified to release their grip on systems that have served them well for eons. This is not class warfare; is it far deeper and far more organic. It is a transition in the nature of civilization.

This dynamic is playing out in communications arenas as well because it is, in part, one of the primary instrumentalities of this transition. The FCC, therefore, faces a particularly intense iteration of this same dynamic. They are struggling mightily to serve their political contributors without sacrificing the integrity of the campaign that put them into power. They actually have an impossible task of simultaneously running a conventional regulatory machine on conventional terms while their very integrity depends upon deconstructing and giving away the tools of the machine they have inherited over the protests of those who wrote the largest checks to the campaign.

Larry Summers is one side of that debate; Susan Crawford is the other. Genochowski’s and Obama’s difficulty is that both Larry and Susan are correct, but Susan’s view is the only one that is sustainable over the long term. Long term thinking, unfortunately, tends to lose out to organizational thinking, the latter of which usually values short and immediate appearances over the birds of consequence who may or may not come home to roost during short term thinking’s watch.

Nevertheless, the FCC and Obama have no choice in this matter. The old ice has melted and power structures everywhere are in motion. At some levels, I sincerely believe they see this, but continue to struggle with how to mediate this apparent chaos.

Here is the good news. We can help. We can enable individuals to have power, intelligence and information in ways they never imagined possible. We can re-create the political process.

But there is a giant challenge: Government WILL NOT do it for us. We must do it for ourselves and for others. This is the lesson of the Internet. When you are given power, you must use it. If you do not use it, others will use it for you. This was the success of the Bush Presidency until the nature of the use became obvious to the majority.

2010 will see the emergence of new forms of legal practice, lobbying, information gathering, information sharing, and of exerting influence. Those who continue to exert influence using conventional methods will increasingly pay higher prices for less. Those who exploit newer approaches will create incredible leverage at extraordinary low cost.

To the extent the FCC has the courage to serve all Americans rather than serve the lowest common political denominator, they will reap historic benefit. To the extent they don’t, they will extinguish what little remains of their moral authority in the eyes of most Americans. In other words, if they are authentic to the core in their embrace of transparency, to the extent they serve up the WHOLE truth and nothing but the WHOLE truth, there is nothing but upside. To the extent they play business as usual, transparency will do what it must and will do so without hesitation and with vigor.

Transition is opportunity. Fighting it is futile. We can only embrace the transition and empower our fellow human beings.

Happy New Year to each and every one of you.

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