Susan Crawford -- why USA 'Net access is slow, costly, unfair [telecom]

Three URLs here regarding the 8-FEB-2013 interview:

the first has background information about Susan Crawford,

the second has the overall summary of the interview along with the listener/reader comments, and

the third has the full transcript of the interview.

Who is Susan Crawford:

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" " Susan Crawford is a leading telecommunications policy expert and " professor of communications and Internet law at the Benjamin " N. Cardozo School of Law. She has held prominent government positions " as Special Assistant to President Obama for science, technology and " innovation (2009), and served as co-leader of the FCC transition team " between the Bush and Obama administrations. Currently, she is a member " of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Advisory Council on Technology and " Innovation. " [...] more info at above URL

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" " Susan Crawford, former special assistant to President Obama for " science, technology and innovation, and author of Captive " Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New " Gilded Age, joins Bill to discuss how our government has allowed " a few powerful media conglomerates to put profit ahead of the " public interest -- rigging the rules, raising prices, and stifling " competition. As a result, Crawford says, all of us are at the " mercy of the biggest business monopoly since Standard Oil in the " first Gilded Age a hundred years ago. " " "The rich are getting gouged, the poor are very often left out, " and this means that we're creating, yet again, two Americas, and " deepening inequality through this communications inequality," " Crawford tells Bill.

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The above URL has the full transcript of the interview.

Reply to
Thad Floryan
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I found an additional item providing more background material:

"The Communications Crisis in America" Vol. 5, 2011, Harvard Law & Policy Review (HLPR) PDF, 19 pages, 440kB:

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" " [...] " This piece aims to explain how the cable distributors' natural " monopoly has arisen, to raise the policy questions that are " prompted by recognition of this problem, and to provide " suggestions for next steps. For the last eight years or so, " our country's telecommunications policies have been based on " the assumption that competition among different forms of " communications-transmission providers (phone, cable, satellite, " wireless, or broadband-over-powerline) would protect Americans " from a wide range of abuses, rendering regulatory oversight " unnecessary. The slow cultural enervation that can arise from " continuous industry consolidation has become an untouchable " third rail of discussion. Meanwhile, entire careers have been " devoted to maintaining and supporting the heroic narrative of " competition. What follows if, as seems to be the case, it " turns out that this story is not true? " [...]

Reply to
Thad Floryan

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Ms. Crawford's book worries me, and I think it should concern other Internauts as well. The interview linked above contains what I feel are unwarranted and unproductive assumptions about the role of the Internet in education, and I'm not comfortable letting them pass without mention.

I'm going to say at the start that this isn't some "In my day" jeremiad. I have no desire to return to the "good old days" of long trips to the library, or of schools having only "dead tree" media for their pupils. I am one of the most enthusiastic supporters of efforts to employ electronic media in education. The question, however, is about the *way* that media is distributed to children, and the compromises adults make while doing so.

With that said, here is a quote from near the start of the interview:

'"The Wall Street Journal" on the front page had an article about kids needing to go to McDonald's to do their homework because they don't have an internet connection at home.'

Even if public libraries didn't have Internet access on site, and even if a quick-serve restaurant was the only place such access were available in a given neighborhood, I resist the parochial notion that children need access to the Internet to benefit from a public-school education. Such a claim is, at best, pandering to the same Internet giants Ms. Crawford claims to decry, and, at worst, tacit acceptance of the notion that "poor" children can't understand books and that "poor" parents are unwilling to fight for alternative content-delivery mechanisms for their kids.

I will leave aside the location debate, because it's just the first straw man Ms. Crawford has set up to attack. It doesn't matter if "Micky D's" is the only WiFi hotspot within walking distance of a child's home: what matters is that Ms. Crawford presupposes the need for Internet access, and arrogates that supposition onto the body politic:

"Parents around the country know that their kids can't get an adequate education without internet access."

... to which I take exception. Parents around the country might choose to believe that the World Wide Web is something more than a conduit carrying information from advertisers to eyeballs, but they are unwise to do so. Parents might assume that the sites teachers ask their pupils to visit are carefully vetted, that they contain educational materials that are devoid of political slant, religious bias, and revisionist history, but they'd be unwise to make /that/ assumption, either.

My point is this: the adequacy of their children's education is, and should be, laid at their partents' doorsteps, along with the morning paper which too many of those parents don't bother reading. We could debate endlessly about the future of printed media, but that paper contains the names and addresses of candidates for School committee seats, and of candidates for local and state legislative offices, too many of whom are willing to abrogate responsibility for students' learning to anonymous corporations which are thousands of miles away.

When my son was in school, the parents of my town insisted that all educational materials which the school wanted to distribute "via the Internet" were also made available on CD or DVD media, provided to any child that asked. After a tumultuous debate, the schools complied with the parents' demands, but in the process by which we found out /why/ the school was resisting our requests, it came out that the "educational" material to be distributed via the Internet was, in fact, being delivered by a for-profit company which had promised to supply the school with statistics about which students had helped each other on assignments.

In short, the school bureacracy had made a deal with a for-profit corporation, which intended to track students' usage, collect money for advertisements, and rat out anyone who helped anyone else to do their homework. Whatever you might think of such agendas, my feeling is that they should not be hidden: *ALL* the aspects of educational material delivered online need to be understood and accepted *before* a single child hits "Enter".

The problem with the Internet is that it is a pipe, and little more than that: it can be filled with spring water or sewerage, either of which can be presented to children whom have neither the experience nor the maturity needed to separate substance from stench.

Ms. Crawford's assumptions that child "need" the Internet are, in my opinion, unwarranted.

Bill

Reply to
Bill Horne

I'm currently working with my city councilor to utilize HUD funding to build a free public Wifi network in my political district.

It's a tough slog - and we're doing it right - private non-profit corporation and all.

Reply to
T

I applaud your efforts: I hope that, someday, *all* citizens will have access to the Internet as a public service.

I will, however, add a caution: assuring citizens access to the Internet does /not/ assure them of access to the educational materials their children need.

Perhaps an analogy will help: as a citizen of the U.S., I expect to enjoy access to my nation's libraries. I think I am entitled to choose for myself what literature I read, and to explore works from a wide range of political views, from all available religious tracts, and from a large assortment of engineering and other technical works. I insist on this right because I feel that it is the only way to make sure that I and other citizens are well informed and able to make responsible choices about our nation, our schools, and our lives.

However, I understand and accept restrictions that are designed to preserve historic works, to keep sensitive materials out of reach of those children whom exhibet only a prurient interest, and to assure fairness in distributing scarce resources. There are the necessary and commonly-agreed-upon tasks assigned to librarians.

Then Internet doesn't have a librarian. There is no watchful eye to steer children away from lewd or lascivious works which are only appropriate for adults, and there is no public - or even professional

- debate over which materials will be made available, or to whom. I think Ms. Crawford has missed a key issue in her book, and it is that children need access, not to the Internet, but rather to the publications that their parents and teachers have agreed are most likely to provide them with a good education. The two are not the same.

Bill

Reply to
Bill Horne

In my daughter's high school, the stuff that in our day was handed out on blurry and highly aromatic dittos or mimeograph is now on the school's web site, and most of the teachers also put their homework assignments there so kids don't have the excuse of having scribbled them down wrong, and can also keep up if they're home for a day or two with a cold.

I think those are reasonable uses, unrelated to cribbing papers from Wikipedia rather than the World Book.

R's, John

Reply to
John Levine

Of course those are reasonable uses: it's a school web site, and that means the teachers are responsible for the content. That's not my point.

Ms. Crawford's blanket assertion that "The Internet" is essential for education is akin to a child's claim that having their own car is essential for transportation, or that a class trip to Brazil is required to round out the high school experience, or that an ipod is necessary to do homework: in each case, the claim must be filtered through the screen of experience and maturity which only parents can provide.

Here's an example:

When my son was in high school, he was friends with two girls in his class, and their grandmother bought them a high-end desktop computer, with a 600 dpi printer and the latest "office" software, and a large, flat-screen monitor.

Their grandmother had me disable the Ethernet port: the girls were never allowed to access the Internet on that computer. The machine had a DVD player that could be used to download classwork, and if the kids forgot to bring it home, then they were told to turn themselves around and go back and get it from the school library.

In addition, their grandmother purchased separate computers I had donated to the church auction, one for each of them, with Linux and Internet access: not the latest, nor the greatest, but perfectly adequate for instant messenger or facetube, with separate keyboards, in a separate place so that they couldn't be used without it being obvious what the girls were spending time on.

They both graduated in the top quartile of their class, and both have now finished college and are starting careers.

"The Internet" is a big place: there's splashing in the wading pool, and there's swimming at the public pool where there's a lifeguard, and there's swimming in the lake with friends, and there's diving into the ocean. Each is appropriate for a different age, for different kids, and for different times of life.

Internet companies may need children, but children do not, ipso facto, need the Internet.

Bill

Reply to
Bill Horne

When I did college the second time around the web was pretty prevalent. I discovered that the majority of my classes put up all the PowerPoint presentations and you could in fact not attend class and still pass the exams.

I've got two servers to use for Squid/DG - maybe I'll use another and throw an Intranet web server utilizing Plone. We could seek content advice from the teachers in the district.

Reply to
T

Along those lines, here is the book review from the Phila Inqr:

"In his 2010 book, The Master Switch, Tim Wu told the history of American communications - wire, broadcast, mobile - as a 150-year cycle of ingenious new tools, whose quick popularity is exploited by empire-building monopolists, until the government regulates (or stagnates) prices and markets. The cycle repeats, according to a new book from Susan Crawford. She tells today's chapter of that story in broad, clear terms that leave no doubt where she finds the current competition-killing, profit-maximizing monopolists: in Philadelphia, at the Comcast Center, and in Washington, where canny lobbyists for Comcast and other big companies, armed with cash and smooth P.R. arguments, relentlessly extend their profitable privileges, trampling would-be advocates of the public interest."

For full review please see:

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[Comcast also provides telephone service.]
Reply to
HAncock4

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