Dispatches from
the Digital Frontier

At a Nov. 30 event at Columbia University, “Big Media: Pro and Con,” Journalism School Dean Nicholas Lemann analogized media policy to a football field: Just as the size and shape of the field dictates the way the game is played, so too does media policy dictate the development of American telecommunications. And on the heels of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s announcement last week of a new net neutrality proposal, we see more clearly than ever that government legislation and regulation are crucial to this field. In that vein, Columbia Journalism School Prof. Richard R. John’s book Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications, published in May, makes the case that policy intervention has been commonplace throughout American history with a sweeping survey of the history of electrical communications from the early Republic to the modern day.

The People’s Republic of China is considering an end to its ban on some imported electronic waste.  In a recent address to a recycling industry conference in Ningbo, Wang Gongmin, an industry leader who has participated in planning for the PRC’s Five Year Plan, called for the approval of importation of “circuit board scraps” among other e-wastes.

On the eve of the Future of the Internet Town Hall in Albuquerque, NM, the Open Technology Initiative and Media Literacy Project have co-authored an essay reminding wireless carriers who truly rules the air.

Chip on Phone Overwrites User-Preferred Software -- Re-installs Original Firmware.

[October 13, 2010 UPDATE: OTI has released this follow-up analysis concerning the policy implications of mobile device lock down.]

Yesterday, some T-Mobile stores began selling its newest mobile device, the G2, an Android-based smart phone originally slated for an October 6 release while AT&T is slated to release it later in the year.