I spent a few hours at the FCC two weeks back, presented a slide version of a top ten list I wrote last year. Requested discussion topics: obstacles to data collection, how data is collected and used, policy-making based on inference, how to develop an objective knowledge base for science and policy, privacy expectations/rights versus the need for understanding the system as critical infrastructure. Audience mostly lawyers, worried about how they are going to accomplish a reasonable broadband plan. As I tried to describe in my five-minute presentation slot (and 1 slide, and more expansive blog entry) on the broadband panel at the DOC ten weeks ago, solutions begin with recognition of some underlying empirical facts, starting with one that is strangely not being emphasized by lobbyists: you can’t make Wall-Street-approved margins moving bits around over long distances. Lot of implications to that reality; the sooner we admit it, the more realistic our broadband plan will be.

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