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.