David Isenberg Offers Kneuer Transcript - Doc Searls Offers Analysis
June 26th, 2007 by Gordon Cook
On June 24 Doc Searls: My own 2¢, while also waiting for a plane, this time in Houston. (As thunderstorms loom… fun.)
What happened between John Kneuer and many (far from most) in the audience — including Gordon, David Isenberg, David Weinberger and myself (each of which had exchanges with Kneuer from mikes on the floor) was two frames that don’t overlap. I listened closely to Kneuer’s speech, and it was framed entirely on a set of assumptions that are not shared by his opposition in the audience — or by their community of like-minded folks, many of the most active and notable of which are on Gordon’s list.
Kneuer’s frame is the Regulatorium. To him, big infrastructure requires big commercial entities who will own and operate the infrastructure they build. Big companies doing Big Things is the free market at work. Duopolies are the free market at work. Auctions that bring billions to the feds exist to assure that the largest and most capable pockets will do the work required to build out this vast and new private infrastructure.
The opposing frame sees the Net as wide open and “stupid” in the Isenbergian sense — a rising tide that lifts all boats, including vast and wide-open markets that dwarf any amount of business the likely buyers of 700MHz spectrum are ever likely to grab for themselves while creating scarcities for everybody else who runs “on” their private networks.
The opposition (that’s us) want open spectrum to allow an ocean to fill, and its tide to lift all boats. Kneuer wants to build canals across the empty spaces where seas might otherwise rise. The wi-fi success example means nothing to him. Wi-fi is cordless phones for laptops, not Real Infrastructure. It’s not serious, and it’s an example of nothing if you’re talking about networks.
I think there *might* be common ground in here somewhere, but I doubt it.
Now they’re getting ready to call our rows for the plane, so I don’t have more time to think and write about it.
Meanwhile, thanks for bringing him in anyway, Kevin. It was a Good Thing, even if the two sides talked past each other.
BTW, I would love to see a transcript of Kneuer’s speech and the Q&A. Possible?
Cook’s Edge: Doc’s nailed it. Two very DIFFERENT frameworks
LIFE LIVED IN DIFFERENT FRAMEWORKS might just as well be lived on different planets.
One tiny footnote -he referred to wi-fi as a LAN extension tool and good for not much else.
David Isenberg: My transcript of the infamous Kneuer incident is here.
I think is is very valuable to see how he frames the issues!
Finally a list member wrote: . I read John Dean’s latest book “Conservatives Without Conscience”. He tracks the evolution of our current Authoritarian Conservatism from the confluence of Military (Neo)Conservatives, Social Conservatives, and Religious Conservatives.
The basic ingredients of Authoritarian Conservatism are amoral leaders that use fear and hatred to retain and consolidate power by convincing their followers that they need protection. It is a simple formula that clearly works.
Welcome to American Fascism. A kinder and gentler form of fascism, but still fascism.
Doc Searls: I read it too. It gave substance to my belief that history (in some future decade, or century) will look back on our Authoritian Age — and the GW Bush election and administration in particular — as a kind of American Reich, the crowning and damning shames of which were the deeply flawed 2000 election and the Iraq war.
And yet Dean’s book had no traction at all. Nor did Pat Buchanan’s earlier book, also providing a hard-core Republican’s view of the corrupt and strange culture that still prevails in Washington, in spite of the Democratic victories in the last election. Nor Kevin Phillips’ even earlier book on the Bush dynasty. All three are, frankly, seen as cranks.
I am left recalling the case Tolstoy made against the Great Man theory, in his book War and Peace. Great historical forces do their own work. History requires half a century or more of future perspective to make full sense of them. I won’t be around when that happens. I’m just hoping my children’s and grandchildren’s generations will live to experience the benefits of that perspective.