The Progress & Freedom Foundation Blog

Rob Atkinson, President of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation:

One of our key challenges stems from the fact that while economists in many other nations, like Tawain and China, read Joseph Schumpeter, ours read neo-classical economists. As a result, while the former recognize that disequilibrium characterizes economies and that innovation and productivity are the keys to prosperity, most U.S. economists rely on models of equilibrium and focus on enhancing allocation efficiency.

He was speaking at the ACT seminar on its recent paper, National Policies as Platforms for Innovation: Reconciling a Flat World with Creative Cities (Feb. 2007).

IPCentral.Info has a quiz for net neutrality proponents.

IPCentral.Info opines about these topics in "Tales of Invention: The Transistor."

At Precursor, Scott Cleland notes that Microsoft is no longer listed as a member of the It's Our Net Coaltion.

Could the organization be getting a little too radical, regulatory, government intrusive, or anti-market-forces for their taste?
Could the folks at Microsoft be worried that if they set a net neutrality fire, there may be no way to control it and they could end up getting burned down with similar net neutrality rules as broadband because they clearly have more market share (90%) of their market than any player?

Could it be that they no longer wanted to associate with rising Googleism?

Of course, it could just be that the computer dropped them accidentally. Those who don't believe in free will have never dealt with computers.

IPCentral.Info has some posts on Net Neutrality covering:

o A link to the webcast of the NN panel at the Gilder Telecosm last week.

o Some thoughts on a world in which each consumer subscribes to multiple broadband pipes.

Since March 2006, the number of premises passed by FTTH has grown from 4 million to 6 million, with 1 million of them actually hooked up, says a release by the Fiber-To-The-Home Council and the Telecommunications industry Association. The number of homes passed is growing by 300K/month, and the builders "include municipalities and utilities, real estate developers and operators as well as traditional and non-traditional service providers."

GigaOm has a chart showing that the number of homes connected went from 322,000 in Sept. '05 to 1,011,000 in Sept. '06. A Verizon-employee commenter says that about 500,000 of the current subscribers belong to VZ, and that VZ alone will have 6 million homes passed by the end of 2006.

Dr. John Rutledge, Chairman of Rutledge Capital, President of the Business School at the Mundell International University of Entreprenuership in Beijing, and PFF Director, looks at China:

After spending the last week in China, I can tell you that the Chinese government understands the only way to deliver high growth and increase living standards without further fouling the air and running out of energy is to focus on IT, communications, and the financial service sector. The Chinese are putting a full court press on innovation and entrepreneurship by aggressively investing in tech education and pursuing policies to attract foreign capital to relocate to China--especially such as R&D operations.
What are we doing?

He answers his own question:

Things are going s-l-o-w-l-y..

Dr. John Rutledge, Chairman of Rutledge Capital and President of the Mundell International University School of Business in Beiing (and member of the PFF Board), and Dr. Joel Popkin, President of Joel Popkin & Co., will speak at "The Telecommunications Economy: Competition and the Global Marketplace," a breakfast briefing sponsored by the Teleconsensus Coalition and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Friday, Sept. 22, 2006. Blurb:

The forum will feature a discussion about the role of telecommunications in the global marketplace, the influence of Asia's burgeoning telecommunications economy, and what the United States must do to remain competitive.