The top blog in the progressive blog neighborhood is Dailykos, the top one in the conservative blog neighborhood is Michelle Malkin. (If we’re talking site traffic alone, Huffington Post is #1, but that also has a ton of authors, and plenty of people visiting it for non-political news.) Kos went to Northern Illinois University, which isn’t *exactly* Ivy-caliber. Malkin went to Oberlin, which (as a fellow alum) I’d love to describe as Ivy-caliber, but it should be noted that everyone who attended Oberlin got rejected by Brown.

More to the point, there’s a lot of mobility *within* a community blog like dailykos. We saw that with fivethirtyeight.com, one of the most interesting case examples from this cycle. The two primary authors were anonymous posters on dailykos, posting under the screennames “poblano” and “pocket nines.” Poblano (Nate Silver) attracted an audience based on his outstanding predictive accuracy, got impressed with pocket nines, and they launched their own site, eventually revealing their identities.

Now that hardly suggests that the blogosphere is an egalitarian environment where anyone can attract an audience of millions. But it does point out some important variance in the basic “preferential attachment” argument. Blog structure can have a HUGE impact on outcomes. If you have a community site like DailyKos as your power-law hub, then that means talented latecomers can still rise through the ranks. An individual site like Malkin or Instapundit, meanwhile, offers far less potential mobility. And that may provide the roots of an explanation of why the progressives have developed such a huge lead in online infrastructure. “Googlearchy” isn’t so menacing if the beneficiary of preferential attachment allows for in-site mobility.

Getting “Governance” right is a timely process, as it pertains many multifaceted social & administrative systems.

Our group chooses a Constitutional Framework to work upon, with elements borrowed from the UN structure.

Admittedly the UN-ITU programs of; WSIS and its IGF extension, are an incredible positive out-reaching gesture, in terms of the UN fostering their own evolution.

It is our position that the UN systemics are of such a design that it precludes itself from becoming a truly viable platform for Internet Governance.

That said, We (WGCIG) continue to discuss and prepare arguments for an approach of governance within a sphere of constitutional means.

Solicitor General
WGCIG. com/net/org

Lately I’ve been thinking more about the sharing of knowledge around the building of “social mobile” applications for the long tail – a book which would guide people in the thinking behind such projects, and good practice. I’ve just written a piece on this topic as one of my regular PC World articles here:

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/154698/social_mobile_applications_the_missing_book.html

I don’t know if such a book would be possible, but I certainly think it’s missing.

Ken

What you’re missing is that my house is where my house is, and I like it being there. Consequently, if I want Internet, then a part of my owning my house is the cost of running telecommunications to it. It’s a cost to me, just as is owning a house. My house cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars. If I have to spend another five or ten thousand dollars to bring high speed Internet to my house, that’s in proportion with the cost of my septic system, or my well, or my wood furnace. Do you think the government should pay for them? I hope not! So why should the government pay for my fiber just because it’s not on my land?

Texas has very few (grandfathered) municipal telecommunications networks, because they are illegal. This must change because telecommuting, distance learning and official/legal/emergency communication will play a large part in the future of Texas. The rural nature of the vast majority of the state of Texas means that there will never be sufficient customer base to provide a profitable return on investment (ROI) for private telecommunications companies; the government must provide this service.

1. Open spectrum.

2. Incentivize actions that grow the network (A few ideas: A Meraki-like model w/ tax credits for sharing, subsidies/credits for repeaters, funding for rural wireless tech – extending range and other “Achilles heel” areas, income-dependent incentives to break digital divide (on network equip and computers), etc…)

I wonder why we don’t just skip fiber to the home and build out a wireless infrastructure?

If spectrum really isn’t scarce then we’d have sufficient bandwidth – ubiquitous ultra-high speed wireless. As long as we’re shooting for the moon let’s do it right.

The 700mhz spectrum would’ve been a good swath of spectrum but there are many other underutilized areas that left.

A year ago there were estimates of what it would have cost google to build out a nationwide wireless network and they ranged from 15-20 billion.

I suspect that even if the government encouraged a more robust version and pushed further in to rural zones, even w/ federal level ineptitude, we’d be looking at substantially less than $300B.

And in my opinion it’d be orders of magnitude better than fiber.

But… it’s highly disruptive. Everyone from Coase to Benkler has argued in favor of an open spectrum approach. If the arguments against scarcity are true it’s a no brainer.

Even though the American people would be huge winners the existing and well entrenched telecom players are very likely to fight against it. And they’ve got the $$$ and lobbying skill to put up a strong fight.

History is full of lessons about how What’s Right For America & What’s Right for The People doesn’t always win – see Lessig’s battle against copyright. Another example of a no brainer.

So… my final suggestions:

1. A large scale public campaign in favor of a moon-shoot broadband push (fiber, wireless, whatever).

2. Tie this to whatever area has legs:
- Democracy 2.0: a new level of engagement via net, every citizen connected to their politician.
- Education: Our kids need this – every child should have access to a computer and the net
- Digital Divide: electronic equity…
- Or all of the above (and more)

3. Appease the telecoms
- Find a way to make them tie the noose and put it around their necks
- Even if it involves direct payoffs, somehow we need to find a way to push them out of the game

4. and finally… tie one or more of the above into the California initiative process. Use CA as a testbed, get Soros, Omidyar and others to throw a wad of cash at the 2009 election and see what it does for the CA economy. If it’s a home run, roll it out everywhere.

That’s all I got for now (and it’s likely too much, thanks for enduring…)
-cc