In case you weren’t at the Web 2.0 Summit earlier this month to hear FCC Chairman Genachowski, O’Reilly has published the interview on YouTube. My Google Reader had already bombarded me with excerpts of Genachowski’s remarks (“net neutrality will happen”) and his unhappiness with the Google-Verizon proposal.
Still curious about what he said, I decided to sit through most of the interview during my lunch hour. It was a typical Genachowksi performance that he gives to interviewers who are not entirely up to speed on the issues. He was gracious, jocular, and made sure to sprinkle his conversation with the right words: innovation, competitiveness, less government, openness, and market-based forces.
And then he took an indirect swipe at the carriers when he said : “…it’s the market and consumers picking winners and losers, not people who control access to the Internet.” Followed by a right-jab when he called the Supreme Court’s Comcast decision “seriously incorrect.”
Somewhere in course of my viewing I started to stare at a map behind the Chairman. I first thought it was a map of the world, the kind you see in television newsrooms. It was actually a conceptual Web 2.0 geography that broke the Internet community into separate islands and land masses.
I guess the 2.0 Summit marketing people decided to turn the various players, their alliances, and merger dreams in this ecosystem into a giant board game, called “Points of Control: The Battle for the Network Economy.”
But not a game entirely based on reality. It was strange to see the “Headsets Plains” being controlled by HP and HTC with Apple relegated to an offshore island.
Also on the map were sea serpents, guarding the trade routes between the various islands, and swimming in “Government Poliseas.”
I suspect most of the software companies at this Web 2.0 conference conduct business very nicely without worrying much about government policies and FCC third-way doctrines.
Then I noticed that Comcast, not typically associated with social networks, cloud computing, and other 2.0 words in the tag cloud, was listed as an event sponsor.
In fact they were the only Diamond sponsor, the highest tier.
Related articles
- FCC chief less than thrilled with Google-Verizon proposal on net neutrality (venturebeat.com)
- Interactive Points of Control Map (web2summit.com)
