I'm hosting an exciting event today over at the New America Foundation -- if you can't make it in person, you can watch the stream live online:

The Open Technology Initiative of the New America Foundation will host Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski on February 24, 2010 at 11am. Chairman Genachowski will preview working recommendations in the National Broadband Plan for advancing U.S. mobile broadband leadership.

Recognizing the importance of broadband for ensuring America’s economic development and leadership, Congress and the President tasked the FCC with developing a National Broadband Plan to connect all Americans to affordable, world-class, high-speed Internet. The FCC’s National Broadband Plan, which the agency will deliver to Congress on March 17, 2010, will create jobs and spur economic growth; unleash new waves of innovation and investment; and improve education, health care, energy efficiency, public safety, and the vibrancy of our democracy.

Chairman Genachowski will preview working recommendations for spectrum reforms incorporated into the National Broadband Plan. A distinguished panel of industry representatives and the public interest advocates will respond to these proposals.

This event will be webcast live, and questions will be taken via Twitter. Send your question or comment to @newamerica with the hashtag of #NAFevents.

Welcome
Steve Coll
President, New America Foundation

Keynote
Julius Genachowski
Chairman, Federal Communications Commission

Moderator
Sascha Meinrath
Director, Open Technology Initiative
New America Foundation

Panelists
Ben Scott
Policy Director, Free Press

Chris Guttman-McCabe
Vice President, Regulatory Affairs
CTIA-The Wireless Association

Julie Kearney
Vice President for Regulatory Affairs
Consumer Electronics Association

Matt Wood
Associate Director, Media Access Project

Here's a fun article from the upcoming issue of IEEE Spectrum. Interestingly enough, while here at the eComm Conference here in Amsterdam, I'm working with my friend, Aaron Kaplan, on some of the newest open source community wireless mesh software and will be bringing home a mesh-in-a-box to deploy in my own back yard.

Netbooks Are Only Part of The Solution

POSTED BY: Tekla Perry // Wed, October 28, 2009

Netbooks are going to be huge, much bigger than they already are. Trust me on this. I say this not because I see more and more people working on them in cafes instead of on standard laptops—though I do. It’s not because I particularly want one—though for short trips I can see the appeal. It’s not because on a recent multifamily vacation one family showed up with one netbook per child.

It’s because my 70-something aunt, the one with the 30-year-old radio that you can only turn off by pulling the plug, and the TV that gets its signal from a 50-plus-year-old two-wire cable, just told me she’s thinking of getting a netbook.

Oh, it’ll be a couple of years before she actually makes the purchase, but the fact that she’s evening considering it is huge. The appeal for her is the cost, for sure—if it turns out to be a mistake, it won’t be a huge mistake. But what also is drawing her is also the fact that netbooks don’t look all that high tech. They don’t take up much room, they don’t have a lot of extra buttons on the keyboard, and they don’t do vast numbers of things she wouldn’t want to do anyway—like edit video or spend hours typing long documents.

But she has been thinking that it would be pretty cool to look up a fact she read somewhere but just can’t remember exactly, or check out a new medication prescribed by her doctor before she orders it.
And that’s enough usefulness to make her part with $250 or so. Once she gets one, I’ll show her how she can keep up with all her grandnieces and nephews on Facebook, and she’ll be set.

Unfortunately, much as I would have liked to, I didn’t run out that moment and get her a new netbook. Because there’s one piece of this puzzle missing—some kind of community wi-fi access. It doesn’t have to be free, it doesn’t have to be fast, but it has to be there; easy to get to at a reasonable price.

Forget dial-up—netbooks don’t even come with built-in modems, and these days the bells and whistle of most web sites mean dial up is just too slow to be viable. Cable modem or DSL would mean new wiring in her home (she’s got one corded wall phone right now, no other jacks), and a box that would have to be installed somewhere, set up, and occasionally rebooted. I can’t see convincing her to go through that hassle and expense.

But community wi-fi would be perfect. She’d need nothing but the netbook, the monthly fee would be reasonable, and, while likely slower than cable or DSL, it’d be moving plenty fast for her needs.
Which got me wondering—what happened to community wi-fi, anyway? I called Sascha Meinrath, research director of the New America Foundation’s wireless future program. He told me that it’s been going great in Europe, but in 2004 or 2005 got sidetracked in the U.S. “The rationale of community wireless, bringing low-cost or free wireless to the masses, got usurped by the corporate model,” he says, “how do we charge money for it.” And the corporations that cities contracted with to build low-cost systems didn’t have a lot of incentive to make those systems succeed, since they’d be competing with their own, higher cost internet access offerings. Earthlink, for example, last year shut down it’s community wireless systems in Philadelphia and New Orleans.

The good news, Meinrath told me, is that community wireless in the U.S. may be starting a new surge. He sees encouraging signs in the efforts of Meraki, a Google-backed startup that’s building low-cost wireless networks for companies, universities, and communities, and other low-cost efforts. He’s starting to see municipal and community groups who looked at community wireless in the past but got put off by the apparently high costs getting ready to take another look at it. And, he says, the $7.2 billion in stimulus funds targeted at increasing broadband access can only help; he’s hoping communities will spend that money on low-cost open source systems instead of expensive proprietary systems to make it go as far as possible.

Now back to my aunt. She still wants that netbook—with Internet access, but without a box in her house. Community wi-fi may be coming, but not soon enough. So I’m thinking, next time I’m visiting I’m going to boot up my laptop and see if I’m picking up any signals; if I am, I’ll go knock on a few doors and see if I can borrow a cup of broadband.

From: Federal News Radio:

Click here to listen to or download the interview. Here's more:

The U.S. is falling behind when it comes to broadband usage and access.

This is according to Sascha Meinrath, Director of the New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative.

Meinrath recently testified at the FCC Workshop on Next Generation Wireless Technology.

He told the Daily Debrief more about why broadband is so important, why the FCC should do what it can to make sure everyone has access to wireless communications, and what broadband could do for federal agencies in remote locations.

"The FCC now, having realized that we are rapidly losing pace with a growing number of other countries, has decided it is time for us to develop a national broadband policy to, in essence, help spur broadband connectivity across the whole country. So, this would mean both faster speeds and better services in places that are already served and doing the necessary infrastructure development to ensure that those that have been unserved or underserved around the country are actually provided this incredibly important, mission critical resource."

Until the late 1990's, the U.S. was the leader of Internet connectivity.

Ten years later, however, there has been a dramatic shift.

Customers in the United States now pay more for worse services, slower speeds and more limitations than other countries around the world.

The federal government is trying to change this, Meinrath said, with a number of different plans.

"On the one hand, we have this broadband stimulus . . . and that's $7.2 billion, which sounds like a whole money on the face of it, but on the other hand, it's a tiny fraction of what we actually need to be spending as a country to really catch up to other countries around the globe to make a competitive infrastructure for next generation, 21st century economies."

Meinrath used the example of Australia for perspective, which has invested $ 31 billion and has a significantly smaller population.

"The U.S., with $7.2 billion, is spending about $24 per capita and Australia is spending $1,400 per capita. So, all of a sudden one can see that the investment that we're making is really just the tip of the ice berg in terms of what we actually need to be putting into broadband infrastructure."

The problem of getting technology out to rural areas is not new.

Meinrath said the same arguments being used today for broadband access were used at the beginning of the 20th century when the telephone first came into use.

"Today, people look at broadband connectivity as, in some ways, a luxury, because they don't see all of the add-ons that it makes possible -- as a resource, atop which all sorts of commerce and . . . efficiencies are made possible. Unless you keep that holistic view of what broadband makes possible, you fail to really take into account the real meaningful implications and ramifications that broadband connectivity makes possible for everyone."

In today's world, there are also detriments for those who are not connected, Meinrath added.

"As more people get online, those that do not have access to that resource face increasingly insurmountable odds, at everyone from developing and getting out their applications for jobs to accessing resources online to paying their bills -- a whole variety of different things that we take for granted now."

The FCC recently started a blog and joined Twitter to better inform the public about the issues surrounding broadband capabilities.

As far as implementing those changes, Meinrath said he is cautiously optimistic that the FCC Is on the right path.

"I haven't yet seen the plan and I haven't yet seen the meaningful changes being implemented that clearly need to be done. . . . I am quite willing to hold people's toes to the fire to ensure that the changes that need to happen, happen."

Meinrath said that the next three to six months will set a trajectory for the next decade of policies and regulations having to do with broadband.

---

On the Web:


New America Foundation -- Prepared Testimony of Sascha Meinrath Before the FCC Wireless Technology Workshop

FCC -- broadband.gov

FCC on Twitter -- twitter.com/fccdotgov

(Copyright 2009 by FederalNewsRadio.com. All Rights Reserved.)

A bit late -- but have been slammed. I speak again on September 9th on the consumer issues panel. Should be a really interesting time of things:

Prepared Testimony of Sascha Meinrath Before the FCC Wireless Technology Workshop

By Sascha Meinrath, New America Foundation
August 13, 2009

I work for a DC-based think tank - holding down the technology arm of the foundation's work.

The Open Technology Initiative formulates policy and regulatory reforms to support open architectures and open source innovations; and facilitate the development and implementation of open technologies and communications networks.

OTI promotes affordable, universal, and ubiquitous communications networks through partnerships with communities, researchers, industry, and public interest groups; and is committed to maximizing the potentials of innovative open technologies by studying their social and economic impacts - particularly for poor, rural, and other underserved constituencies.

***

Today we are living through a critical juncture in telecommunications history.

A trifecta of recent societal shifts are combining to create a "perfect storm" for advancing policies to better meet the needs of all U.S. residents.

• First, technological advances are creating a whole host of new platforms and hardware to better connect people, dramatically increasing the utility of communications tools.
• Second, consumers everywhere are clamoring for access to advanced services and new applications - driving multi-media production and information dissemination.
• Third, generational shifts amongst our country's key decision-makers are generating the potential for seismic changes in our country's regulatory environment.

Taken together, these factors should be driving a communications renaissanceakin to the introduction of the printing press, telephone, or the Internet itself.

Instead,what we are seeing is a systematic entrenchment of vested interests that are diligently:

1. working to prevent many of the most innovative technologies from ever seeing the light of day;
2. who are engaging in draconian attempts to limit media production and stifle information dissemination; and,
3. as Amy Schatz reported yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, launching unprecedented lobbying efforts to stagnate or prevent meaningful and much-needed reforms.

Here inside the Beltway, an epic battle is about to be waged between those seeking to create a participatory, distributed, and democratic digital public sphere and forces seeking to re-establish a command-and-control regime over next-generation telecommunications infrastructure.

As the populace shifts from wireline to mobile communications as theirconnectivity norm, wireless technologies are at the very heart of this battle.

Instead of building next-generation networks focused around lowering costs forconsumers and maximizing user control over the services and hardware we have bought, providers are architecting systems that maximize billable moments -commoditizing every new space and function possible.

Instead of fostering interconnectivity of networks and interoperability of devices, theforces of command-and-control seek new ways to capture market share and generate path dependencies to limit customer churn.

Handset exclusivity and the lockdown of cellular phones and PDAs are symptomatic of this business model; but so too are the myriad limitations we've already seen to prevent users from doing everything from streaming video, to Google Voice andSkype.

Historically,over the past 75 years, we have dramatically increased wireless capacity by opening up higher and higher frequencies as the technologies have made these bands viable. Allocations for new uses have paralleled these reforms.

However, assignments to license holders in years' past, being based upon the cutting edge technological capacities of their day, are remarkably in efficient by today's standards.

Today, cognitive and software defined radio technologies allows us to "in-fill"throughout the public airwaves - dynamically reusing empty or underutilized frequencies.

This opportunistic spectrum reuse - and its potential to dramatically decentralize and improve communications - is one of the most powerful tools available for breaking the current strangleholds we face over how we communicate.

Today's technological capabilities have far outstripped many current business practices- straining infrastructure that was built for the wrong purpose.

Tomorrow, this disruptive potential is certain to grow and - so long as current systems remain locked down and service provision fails to meet consumer needs - may achieve explosive proportions.

The question we must all face and answer, is "How do we transition to a moredistributed, participatory, democratic telecommunications system?"

After years of burying our head in the sand, a continuing failure to forthrightly address systematic shortcoming in our wireless communications infrastructure will dramatically increase the headaches (and economic costs) that we will eventually have to face.

Leadership from Congress, from private industry, and from the public interest sector is desperately needed to ensure that these necessary transitions are graceful instead of unmanageable and liberatory instead of harmful.

But most importantly, the onus lies with the FCC to ensure that the future of wireless communications lives up to its democratic potential.

The FCC, through incentives and regulatory fiat has the responsibility to ensure that the public airwaves serve, first and foremost, the best interest of the residents of the United States and leverage the capabilities of open hardwareand software; cognitive radio technologies; and peer-to-peer, distributed infrastructures.

I look forward to hearing how each of my co-panelists sees their company's rolein supporting this mandate and look forward to your questions.

Recently, Public Knowledge visited with the Open Technology Initiative to discuss some of our recent projects. Here's the quick 5-minute video they pulled together -- they wanted to interview me, but I pulled in a whole bunch of my staff. Lots of fun!

I got a surprise call from Gigi Sohn, President of Public Knowledge, yesterday evening that I'd been chosen by this year's judges for their IP3 award for "Internet Protocol". Very exciting stuff! You can swing by and hoist a pint in celebration at the October 15th award ceremony. More info is below:

Public Knowledge Presents Sixth IP3 Awards to Vaidhyanathan, Jackson, Meinrath

For Immediate Release:
August 4, 2009

Public Knowledge President Gigi B. Sohn announced that three winners have been chosen for the 2009 IP3 awards. In addition, a special President’s Award will also be presented. The name of that winner has not yet been disclosed.

This year, the awards will be given to Siva Vaidhyanathan, Karen Jackson and Sascha Meinrath. Awards are given to individuals who over the past year (or over the course of their careers) who have advanced the public interest in one of the three areas of “IP” –Intellectual Property, Information Policy and Internet Protocol. The awards will be presented at a ceremony Oct. 15 in Washington, D.C.

Vaidhyanathan was recognized for his work in intellectual property. Now a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia, Vaidhyanathan for a decade has been one of the leading academic advocates for a more balanced copyright policy. He is the author of two books, His first book, “Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity,” (New York University Press, 2001) and “The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System” (Basic Books, 2004), with a third scheduled for next year. He also has written numerous articles and appeared on TV making the case for access to information.

Jackson, the deputy secretary of technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia, was recognized for her work in information policy. She was recognized for her work in making information available to local governments about how to bring broadband to their areas, and for leading the Commonwealth’s broadband mapping project using state resources to complete the task ahead of many other states. She has worked with government and industry to become one of the preeminent broadband advocates in the country.

Meinrath was recognized for his work in Internet protocol. He is the creator of the Open Technology Initiative (OTI) at the New America Foundation. OTI is dedicated to using the potential of innovative open technologies by studying their social and economic impact, providing in-depth, objective research, analysis, and findings. He was also a principal in creating the Measurement Lab (M-Lab), an open platform designed to allow researchers to study traffic on the Internet. He also has a long history of building wireless community networks, and provides expertise on spectrum issues to the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition.

Judges for this year were:

Kenneth DeGraff, legislative director for Rep. Mike Doyle;

Parul Desai, vice president of the Media Access Project;

Jason Schultz, Acting Director, Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic, UC Berkeley School of Law;

Jonathan Taplin, professor at the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California, and a member of the Public Knowledge Board of Directors.

IP3 winners in 2008 were Ben Scott, policy director at Free Press; Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Carl Malamud, founder of Public.Resource.org. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) received the special President’s Award.

---

Public Knowledge is a public-interest advocacy and education organization that seeks to promote a balanced approach to intellectual property law and technology policy that reflects the “cultural bargain” intended by the framers of the constitution. More information available at: http://www.publicknowledge.org

About a half-decade ago I wrote up a piece for the Journal of Community Informatics, "Community Wireless Networking and Open Spectrum Usage: A Research Agenda to Support Progressive Policy Reform of the Public Airwaves". My focus was on spectrum policy, but the first key point I raised was valuable across the board -- to create a truly progressive telecommunications policy:

"First, identify major research that has already been conducted and impacted (or been cited) in regulatory/policy debates, as well as the independent research labs that are most active in contemporary spectrum research areas. This assessment would survey the literature that "counts" -- encompassing technical, economic, social, and other domains that should be taken into account and help inform contemporary regulatory/policy debates. This literature could then be used to help set the agenda for future policy debates."

Now fast forward to today's press release from the FCC (and which happens to be put out by my friend and colleague, Jen Howard, who just started her new gig at the FCC last week):

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 14, 2009

NEWS MEDIA CONTACT
Jen Howard
(202) 418-0506
Jen.howard@fcc.gov

Harvard’s Berkman Center to Conduct Independent Review of Broadband Studies to Assist FCC

WASHINGTON – The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University will conduct an independent expert review of existing literature and studies about broadband deployment and usage throughout the world. This project will help inform the FCC’s efforts in developing the National Broadband Plan.

“Advanced communications have the potential to enhance the lives of all Americans, improve public safety, create jobs, and support our economic recovery,” Chairman Julius Genachowski said. “As the Commission embarks on the important task of crafting a National Broadband Plan, better data will inform and animate the activities of the agency. The Berkman Center’s independent review of existing information will help lay the foundation for enlightened, data-driven decisionmaking. I appreciate the Berkman Center’s invaluable assistance and look forward to seeing the results.”

Yochai Benkler, the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard, and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said, “I am pleased that the Berkman Center can contribute positively to the process Chairman Genachowski has envisioned for developing a national broadband strategy by providing to the Commission, and thereby the public, the results of our compilation and assessment of the existing literature on this important and timely subject.”

“A comprehensive assessment of these plans will be enormously helpful given our short timetable,” said Blair Levin, who is coordinating the FCC’s National Broadband Plan. “We don’t want to reinvent the wheel. Knowing what has already been learned will improve our ability to deliver the best possible National Broadband Plan.” Consistent with Chairman Genachowski’s recent public statements regarding an open and transparent National Broadband Plan process, the results of the Berkman Center review will be made publicly available.

Awesome!

I spent my morning yesterday on Connecticut Public Radio (WNPR) discussing the digital divide. It was a fun show (I always enjoy the call-in formats since listeners often bring up the best questions and comments). Here's more along with a link to the Where We Live show archive:

WWL: Closing the Digital Divide | Connecticut Public Broadcasting Network

The internet might have been born here in the US, but we’ve fallen behind much of the industrialized world when it comes to making sure everyone can access the web.  Non-white households, rural households, and low income households are still significantly less likely than wealthier, whiter, more urban populations to have fast, reliable internet at home. And that's a problem. Connectivity has consequences for the economy and for education, and increasingly, for democracy.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act includes $7.2 billion in stimulus funding for broadband deployment to under served areas—to be distributed by next summer. Many are calling this a golden opportunity to close the digital divide, a move towards internet access for all Americans. Coming up, Where We Live, a discussion with policy experts and activists.

How do we get affordable broadband into housing projects? Over mountain passes? Out to remote farms? And why does it matter? What do you think? Has internet access become more than a luxury…is it a right?

 
Related Content:
• Curtis Hill
• Wally Bowen
• Sascha Meinrath
Links for this Episode:
Open Technology Initiative at The New America Foundation
Mountain Area Information Network
Speed Matters
Concepts for Adaptive Learning
St. Cloud Florida-Cyber Spot

Here's a fun event that I'll be speaking at on the 25th. Should be a lively discussion of what's possible (yet not happening) in terms of 21st Century spectrum licensure.

The End of Spectrum Scarcity:

Opportunistic Access to the Airwaves

As the FCC begins its year-long process to recommend a National Broadband Plan, one starting point is to unlock publicly-owned assets that can facilitate ubiquitous, affordable broadband access. Wireless spectrum remains the most cost-effective and rapid means to deliver broadband access to rural and unserved urban residents. But as mobile broadband use continues to increase exponentially, demand for spectrum will rapidly outpace availability under current spectrum management policies.

Public policy seems stymied by the myth that spectrum is scarce. In reality, only government permission to access the airwaves (licenses) is scarce – spectrum capacity itself is barely used in most locations and at most times. This underutilized spectrum represents enormous, untapped, public capacity for high-speed and pervasive broadband connectivity. It is vital to a national broadband plan to consider policies that will encourage more intensive and efficient use of the nation’s spectrum resources.

What combination of technologies and policy reforms can open the airwaves and enable an era of pervasive connectivity? Our panel includes technology and policy experts who believe dynamic, opportunistic access to underutilized spectrum – especially federal government bands – is feasible if we can only muster the political will. One promising mechanism for making substantial new allocations of spectrum available for wireless broadband deployments and other innovation is to leverage the TV Bands Database that will be certified by the FCC for unlicensed access to vacant TV channels. Several papers describing this and other ideas to achieve more shared, dynamic spectrum access will be released at this event.

Start: 06/25/2009 - 12:15pm
End: 06/25/2009 - 1:45pm

New America Foundation
1899 L Street NW, 4th Floor
Washington, DC 20036
United States
See map: Google Maps

Participants

Kevin Werbach
Assistant Professor of Law, the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Co-lead on the Obama Administration's FCC Transition review

Preston Marshall
Director, Information Sciences Institute,
Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California
Former Program Manager, DARPA
Next Generation Communications

Michael Marcus
Principal, Marcus Consulting

Tom Stroup
CEO, Shared Spectrum Company

Sascha Meinrath
Director, Open Technology Initiative, New America Foundation

Michael Calabrese
Vice President and Director, Wireless Future Program, New America Foundation

Jessica Clark over at the American Prospect has been thinking about the future of American public media and recently interviewed me, Kinsey Wilson, Rey Ramsey, and Ellen Hume about our thoughts on where we're headed. The article came out on my birthday (hoo-ray!).

Originally from the American Prospect:

Defining Public Media for the Future

The American Prospect

Four experts discuss what "public media" means -- and what it will look like in the future.

Jessica Clark, Kinsey Wilson, Rey Ramsey, Sascha Meinrath and Ellen Hume | April 30, 2009

How can we imagine a public-media network, which not only offers citizens news, information and culture but directly connects them to one another and stimulates debate? We asked four experts in journalism and media policy to help us brainstorm how this might work. An abridged version of their discussion appears below.

What does the phrase "public media 2.0 network" mean to you?

Kinsey Wilson, senior vice president of digital media at National Public Radio:

As we look ahead, there may be some confusion between public media, public-interest media, and journalism. I suppose in the strictest terms, "public media" would be the digital incarnation of legacy institutions such as PBS [the Public Broadcasting Service] and NPR. But in reality what we're going to see is a blurring of the distinction between public media, participatory media, and public-interest journalism. All of these are going to be practiced with a mix of commercial and noncommercial funding, as we see that advertising really doesn't provide sufficient support.

Rey Ramsey, chief executive officer of One Economy Corporation:

I would like to look at what I call "public purpose media," which allows everyone -- particularly low-income people -- to get life-sustaining and life-enhancing information. My goal is to make sure that you get quality information and that it engages you in some way. It's less about who owns it than its actual availability. We need to be smart about digital technology, about being inclusive of minority communities and the poor.

When we launched the Beehive, it was specifically designed to deliver tools and resources [to] low-income people. We've had millions of people visit the site and get info about how to take advantage of income-tax credits and children's health insurance. So when I say "life-sustaining and life-enhancing," that's precisely what I mean. In the public-purpose space, it's not about entertainment; it's really about making sure that very basic things are getting taken care of.

Sascha Meinrath, research director of the Wireless Future Program at the New America Foundation

For almost 10 years now, I've been involved with the global justice movement and Indymedia, which at the turn of the millennium pioneered this notion of on-the-streets, participatory journalism. Back in the late 1990s, we created novel ideas about community blogs and open publishing systems that have really caught on since. We really need to take those sorts of ideas and ideals to the next level to create a next-generation public soapbox.

When I think of the crisis that journalism is facing right now, it really centers around the notion of a professional journalist class within our society. They were endowed with both a steady paycheck and with the responsibility to be critical analysts. Clearly, what's happened is that critical analysis and investigative reporting have atrophied -- not that they are not existent but that journalism is not fulfilling that role. And I think people in our society are responding to that.

There's a reason why local media have ceased to be as relevant as they once were. That needs to be recaptured in some way. The role that media play is fundamentally important to civil society, but we need to rediscover what that means in a 21st-century economy and communication society. Community intranets and local control of media are critically important. Maintaining open networks free from censorship is also foundationally important to what this future media might look like.

Ellen Hume, research director for the Center for Future Civic Media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

I totally disagree that there isn't a vibrant investigative journalism role that's being played. If you look at what local newspapers continue to do with their hands tied behind their backs, there are still people being exposed and going to jail. It's popular to say that investigative journalism is dying, but it's actually resurging in new ways in projects like ProPublica. Now, to say it's all well and good and financed, I wouldn't argue that. But I think that investigative work is really hard to do, and it's hard to imagine it's going to be done by flash mobs and that sort of thing. There is important investigative work that's being done, and sometimes it takes an institution to do it.

But are we going to have radio stations and licenses? Or are we going to be taking our audio bits, posting them using cell phones and other devices onto Web platforms and accessing them in whatever stream we want -- the way we do now with YouTube and other platforms? I think that the station is kind of history.

Wilson:

Not only do I think it's likely in the future, it's already here to some extent. It's very much part of the fabric of the way we're beginning to work.

There needs to be a portal of some sort, so that people looking for public-interest content will be able to find it. Also there needs to be money, to help post and produce some of this content that may be floating around. Is it the government's role to backstop this capacity?

Ramsey:

There is a role for government, but I think that everything should be on the table. Trying to figure out what gatekeeping needs to be done and by whom is not the most important thing at this point. I think it's trying to ensure that some very basic things get done, and there are multiple ways to do this.

I would like to see there be a myriad of creative ways for the consumer to get to the content. We've had too many problems in terms of that; there are still too many segments of the population not being served -- particularly when there's public money being spent. We have to make sure that inclusion is at the top of the list.

Meinrath:

We need government subsidies for the in-depth, long-term work of muckraking. We need a lot more of that in our society. When we don't have it, we go to war over false pretenses and do all sorts of other things that we probably wouldn't be doing if the body politic were better informed. And part of this critical juncture is this reassessment of what it means to be a broadcaster. I think we are very much at the end of the broadcast era. Not that broadcasting ceases to exist, but, like the pamphleteer of old, we are transitioning into something new and different. There will be broadcasters that evolve gracefully and those who cease to exist. But I think content distribution is going to change. It's going to have to, because people are demanding that media be a lot more inclusive and diverse.

Ramsey:

It's really important to separate the notion of function versus institutions. There is investigative reporting going on: That function is occurring. We might need to backstop the function, but what we have is institutions that are faltering, and they're two very separate things.

Wilson:

I'm not so sure I want to see the government directly funding news-gathering per se. We don't have a deep tradition of that in this country, as you do in some other countries in Europe and elsewhere. I think I would want to see some evidence that the firewall between funders and news-gatherers could be maintained.

Hume:

It's problematic to have government fund media production, but I think media capacity or citizen-journalism capacity is a very important thing to consider having government funding for.

I would also like to put in a word for media literacy. I think the education system which the government has influence over is absolutely broken when it comes to civics training and media. In many schools, media literacy -- if they offer it all -- is just "the big corporations are out to screw you, therefore turn off the TV sets." There's so much more to learn. How do you participate using these tools? How should you evaluate whether something is truthful or useful to you? That's such an important part of the new landscape.

But to have government fund actual muckraking, I hate to say it, but I think it's very naive. That just has never worked. On the other hand some institutions are going to be required to have the clout to speak truth to power. The whole flow of power that's changing with public media is both wonderful and frightening, because it's dispersing the ability to hold those stories in the faces of the people in authority and say, "You can't ignore this."

Wilson:

A lot of government funding has been directed toward overcoming the barriers to entry that traditional distribution systems posed. It was very costly to get into the media business, and it required the kind of support that you could get from government to overcome that. We're in an environment now where the cost of information distribution and production is approaching zero. So it raises the prospect of what's really going to get funded.

Hume:

I wasn't talking about the government supporting specific stories and content creation but the capacity for news to be presented. I still think the government needs to have a role in pushing back against some of these efforts to control aspects of the Internet, for example.

Ramsey:

I would probably agree that direct government funding of reporting would be problematic. But there is a fair amount of government money that goes into sustaining and enhancing a system. And there's a lot of money that people fight very hard for in the system under the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. And there's a constellation of those who get it and those who don't.

Potentially, a public media 2.0 network could be for people who have been underserved. But there are a lot of competitors for this new space, including institutions that are already getting money under the old system. Is it possible to network together some clout, by bringing some institutions together around a story, maybe on a local level? Has anybody seen this work?

Wilson:

I would venture that the emerging journalism world is going to be a constellation of more-narrowly focused niches that are perhaps drawn together in some fashion, through some kind of network. But audiences will tend to gravitate toward those who create the most commanding experience or content or have the most commanding voice within a particular category. That is a very different model of media than the broad, horizontal cover-the-waterfront sort of journalism that was fashioned in part because of the types of distribution systems that existed.

How those network together, how many different actors come into play, and even whether all of them are traditional journalists remains to be determined.

So is it useful to think about the capacity that we're building -- potentially with government funding -- as the capacity to band together around issues, providing a space where you can discuss those within some civil context? Is that a useful redefining of "public media 2.0"?

Hume:

I think you have to start with where people are feeling passionately connected if you are going to engage them with media. On the other hand, the notion that the government would support issue-based media of any kind -- unless it's propaganda for the military -- strikes me as very unlikely. Anytime you think you're going to get this wonderful moment where the government is going to support media about an issue, someone's going to be on the other side of the issue and say, "No, no, no, you can't do it that way."

Wilson:

I think the audience is going to define how all this gets shaped in ways that it wasn't able to previously. And I think the role for public media is to remove barriers and to ensure that information flows freely, allowing people to communicate easily with one another, to ensure that there are standards around the interchange of information. It's more of an enabling capacity, perhaps, than a convening capacity.

Meinrath:

I actually think that Kinsey hit it on the head when he talked about how costs of distribution are dropping to the floor. Of course, that scares the bejesus out of folks in the traditional media.

We, as a society, have to seriously consider what it means when media and communications become just a fundamental part of everyone's everyday life, except for those left offline. There are detriments to being outside that conversation, that public sphere, as it's growing and growing. We really have to think about spreading connectivity, spreading broadband to all reaches of the country. In terms of innovation, we need to fully reconsider our spectrum. We also need to look at public subsidies for broadband connectivity throughout the country. It's like the über-media: voice, video, e-mail, all of these things wrapped into one. For those left off, it's going to become increasingly difficult to participate in civil society.