Telecom Retreat: Day 1 (raw)notes
Opening speaker Larry Irving, part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 development team.
Very pro-Web 2.0 concept “Web 2.0 provides unfiltered access to underrepresented groups” to share their largely unheard stories. Some of the technologies he’s into include Slingbox, MySpace (where he has access to digital natives’ content via his daughter linking him as a MySpace friend), blogs, videoblogs, and YouTube.
Main points I got were:
1. Libraries need to define what it means to be a library in the 21st Century;
2. We need to look into broadband definitions (currently officially defined at 200 MB/second per the Telecommunications Act of 1996 — or variously as 500 MB/s, 1.5 MBbs, or 3 MBps by FCC documents);
3. We should look at cost comparisons internationally, e.g. cost per Mbps access an cost per bit - US is overpaying by significant amount;
4. Practice the Gretzky/Jordan rule: determine where the puck/ball will be and play *there*, meaning figure out where the action will be and start getting there. I think the “NexGen Librarians” are getting there though I lament the us vs. them impression I get when I read some NexGen content;
5. How do “we” (the current policy making generation of 40-60+ year olds (or digital immigrants) get inside the heads of the “digital natives?” Where would be a good place to hold a policy discussion with digital natives? (I posit Internet Librarian as good place to hold a policy discussion - though having never been, are IL attendees interested in a policy discussion?)
A couple other soundbytes:
–”People are smarter than inventors” (possibly apocryphal) example: Slingbox was invented to get TV over internet, the inventor’s wife immediately saw the utility to check up on the baby sitter and sleeping child while they were out of the house.
–”A change is gonna come.” Song reference to close his talk.
–Look up David huges’ 1990’s vision (from ~1995/96) — I don’t remember why I thought this was important to list here - also I missed any meta-info on Dave so I’m finding more false positives than I want to admit.