Met with a local official. It's good to live in a small town.
Thank you to the local official who added an hour onto his busy day to stick around and take the time to talk to me last night. I think the types of things that I am talking about are not the typical issues that you would expect to hear about when you get involved with local government. I am very fortunate to live in a small town where the local government takes the time to listen to resident’s concerns.
I am not the best communicator and it may be easier for me to write some java programming code than to try to explain Net Neutrality to a non geek; but I was fortunate that the official took the time to listen and gave me a chance to try to come up with a coherent explanation of what Net Neutrality is and why our town should be talking about it. I had a hard time of it but, given enough time, I think I was able to get my point across. I think we had a productive meeting and I look forward to further discussions.
I think the Net Neutrality proponents who were on the panel at the final session of this past Monday’s Personal Democracy Forum faced some of same challenges that I did. Us geeks almost innately understand Net Neutrality and why it is important but we don’t do a good job of explaining it to non-technical people. Even when the audience was Rep Anthony Wiener, a government official used to dealing with complex telecom issues, we need to do a better job of explaining in concrete terms why we are concerned about Net Neutrality. I’m going fishing with my dad this weekend, he’s a salesman and non-technical, I think I’ll practice by trying to explain it to him. I recommend that the proponents of Net Neutrality at the SaveTheInternet or MoveOn level get some practice in as well.
Comments
Whenever I'm trying to explain something technical to non-geeks, I go with an analogy. At first I tried to think of a good analogy using electricity or water or phones, but I think a better analogy is the media; the Internet delivers information like a newspaper.
Want to bring the issue home for a politician? Ask the politician how s/he would react if the local newspaper (say, the Asbury Park Press) offered "premium access" to whichever political party was willing to enter into a partnership. You don't even have to get into specifics about what "premium access" in a newspaper would mean. Just the idea that a content provider could buy special treatment is enough.
The newspaper analogy works better than TV, because as in most areas, there is one dominant newspaper (the Asbury Park Press). Sure, people could switch to the Hub or Two River Times or Tri-City News, but they aren't in the same league, just as the other Internet providers aren't in the same league as FiOS.
Posted by: DAn | June 15, 2006 03:37 PM