More Educating; Less Snickering
Hahahahahahaha. In an illustration of the chasm between Washington realities and the cyber-utopian echo-chamber, some in the blogosphere laugh with self-satisfaction at 85-year-old Senator Stevens for his comments on how the Internet works and wonders how someone that they consider a luddite could chair the Senate Commerce Committee.
But, who is the joke on?
And, is it the job of Senator Stevens to provide the perfect analogy of how the Internet works? Or is it to understand the bigger picture of how the Internet fits into the larger economy?
Moving to the bigger picture...
Regardless of what side one takes on net neutrality, it must be recognized that when the industry gets involved in a pitched, focused battle, not a lot of broad-based education unattached to a specific agenda is going to happen. Quite the opposite.
This needs to change. Back in the 1990s -- when tech could do no wrong and when we didn't have many specific "asks" -- we educated policymakers on the promise and benefits of emerging technologies. We gave them a big picture story to tell. (more after the jump)...
Now, technology may be getting more pervasive, but it's not getting any easier to explain (especially to extremely powerful and busy congressional leaders). Toss on the facts that tech is no longer the golden child and the industry now has (legitimate) special interest needs that make the industry seem to some in DC like any other with their hands out. All this results in many conversations about the value of individual trees, but very little about why the whole forest is having a dramatic positive impact on the lives of, say, Alaskans.
This is not to say that members of Congress shouldn't meet the industry half-way and slow down their ADD ways for an hour to understand how a transformative sector really works. Drive-by congressional meetings are the norm for industry lobbyists -- not deep, informed conversations.
Still, the industry works in the real world. And, we collectively need to take the opportunity to step-back and do a much better job in clearly explaining why our industry is making the lives of average Americans better and better. Once that is done, than it's a heck of a lot easier to drill down into specific issues.
We need to target up-and-coming state and federal policymakers and multiply efforts to educate the staff members of the already powerful (and extremely busy).
And, perhaps most importantly, we need to help create a high-level tech-positive storyline for future presidential candidates. (The last thing we need is a presidential candidate running against MySpace).
The goal is to get policymakers to understand why technology matters -- not necessarily how it works. How many congress folks can explain clearly how oil is refined, what makes a spark plug spark, or what the perfect soil conditions are for corn?
Exactly.
Conventional wisdom says that tech only needs to spend millions on top of millions of dollars to get its voice heard in Washington. We disagree. Money may help but relevance and importance to constituents trumps dollars.
Less snickering. More educating, please.
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