David Gelertner does what he does so well, here. He touches on the idea of opportunity cost as it is applied to learning and information, but in the main he is focused on what an Information Age is all about. Per usual, his essay is thoughtful, mildly provocative and laced with dry observations on contemporary culture. His prediction for an Information Age version of the New Yorker from the 1930s or 1940s is enticing. Later, he comes back to a common theme, education, with this line: Eventually we will get over the idea that playing with computers and the Internet is inherently virtuous. It reminds me one of the most powerful cautionary tales I ever read about Info-Age over-enthusiasm. At the apex of the bubble, Mark Helprin wrote this short story.

Convenient to this entry, Helprin also touches on the marvels of technology, the effect on society and wealth generation, education and children and the religio-historical ties of culture.

Early this week, the Ohio utilities commission announced a series of seven public hearings that will take place across the state in January. On its face, the hearings are an opportunity for public comment on a staff proposal for the implementation of recent legislation, House Bill 218. At issue is the regulation of basic local telephone service

It might be better understood as a victory for the Office of the Ohio Consumers' Counsel (OCC).

Mike Musgrove has a column in the WashPost on "walk throughs" or highly detailed directions to guide video game players through every puzzle, trap and situation of their favorite video games. It may be a clip-n-save for anyone expects to need a little help next week with the latest additions to the household video game collection.

While the column is ostensibly about the guides - many of which run hundreds of pages and are available for free on the Internet - there are some subtle points made about the economics of information goods.

A GAO survey released yesterday found widespread support for extending the FCC's spectrum auction authority beyond its 2007 experiation date, but identified little consensus on how better to allocate spectrum efficiently. FCC staff told GAO that combining the current "command and control" process with an "exclusive, flexible rights" model on the one hand and a "commons" model on the other might work. Industry stakeholders wanted more flexible use and a reexamination of the allocation of spectrum between the government and the market.

Yesterday afternoon I saw a quote in a news story by a former co-worker I've long known and respected. He made a baffling claim, namely that broadband providers that might look to offer premium tiers of high-speed content to their customers are "fooling around with the basic DNA of the Internet." This individual knows full well that the basic DNA of the Internet is a decentralized combination of interconnected networks all running on the same transfer protocol. No service or special feature offered by a broadband ISP on its particular connection will change that. What could change the basic DNA of the Internet is government regulations, and that is what my former co-worker and others are calling for.

We received word late Friday that Nevada Senator John Ensign has agreed to co-sponsor the Digital Age Commuincations Act bill (S. 2113) that Senator Jim DeMint introduced on Thursday. In July, Senator Ensign demonstated that he is fast becoming a congressional leader in developing market-oriented communications policy when he introduced his own communications bill. Now, it is gratifying to see that he is joining Senator DeMint in co-sponsoring DACA.

All in all a pretty good week in the cause of meaningful communications reform. Senators DeMint and Ensign, both Commerce Committee members, deserve great credit for their willingness to step forward as leaders in this worthwhile endeavor.

Over at the Disco-Tech blog, Bret Swanson is not impressed with the latest action of the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission.

What's worst: Requiring cost studies from all firms that offer anything more than a standard voice service in order to establish price floors.

When I wrote about Indiana here, and here, both legislative offerings emphasized phased deregulation of prices. Obviously, the IURC went a different direction after the legislation failed.

In a previous column about "A La Carte as Censorship," I noted how some regulatory activists were using a la carte regulation as a Trojan Horse to impose content controls on cable TV. In the last couple of days, "family-friendly" tiers have been "voluntarily" offered by the cable industry as a way to head off a la carte mandates and cable censorship in general. But it's already clear that this won't change things much since activist groups and lawmakers are jawboning for specific channels and content to be included or excluded from these tiers.

Jeff Pulver correctly draws the new battle lines for the new regulatory issues of consequence; namely, net neutrality. Unfortunately, Jeff attributes opposition to such regulation as cartel-like attempts to create walled gardens by Internet access providers.

To begin with, it is a strange cartel that appears to be engaging in such vigorous price competition. Furthermore, the walled garden has been tried and abandoned -- remember AOL circa 1993 and that quaint integrated company, Compuserve? As a general rule, the relatively more open platforms prevails over the relatively more closed -- though the iPod and resurgence of Mac OS might be the exception that proves the rule. In the end, the relevant question of an access provider trying to create a walled garden is: so what? If there are competitive networks, then there is little policy concern with what consumers prefer.

What is net neutrality about then? There are a range of possible answers from the mistakenly benign to rapacious rentseeking. Of course, the motivations overlap, but let's run through a few of them:

On the benign side is the Lessig-ite invocation of the moral norms of the Internet. This case for net neutrality does not care about the economics of the situation, but rather asserts a normative superiority for open, equal, non-discriminary access to end-users. There is an honesty to this view, but it is not self-evidently morally superior to a system predicated on property rights and contractual relations governing relations between Internet-layer players. Indeed, it is my suspicion that the property/contract model produces greater overall output, which in turn means more broadband access and subscribership.

My colleague Adam Thierer has the definitive blog treatment of yet another motivation: price regulation. The fundamental conundrum of high fixed/low marginal- cost industries is how to recover the fixed costs. Net neutrality impeded the ability to price discriminate, the manner in which markets tend to solve this problem. Other alternatives to this problem include government ownership or regulated monopoly. The price regulation alternative tends toward this latter model, a model which has not served us well in the past.

My short PS on franchising detente had a secondary purpose of trying to separate trifles from issues of real moment for infrastrucure providers. Franchising is a temporary trifle between parties with long-term like regualtory interests.

By contrast, net neutrality and interconnection threaten the very incentives to invest in broadband infrastructure. On these issues, then, there should be common cause between broadband infrastructure providers against the rent-seekers and do-gooders who would limit business models and regress back toward price regulation.