Conservative political psychology is like....

Timely for my post mentioning Dean and the Digital Divide, is an article from the Christian Science Monitor dateline Costa Rica that seems to confirm the idea that broadband access in iteself does not drive use or acceptance.

Maslow's Hierarchy would seem to have deep gap between it's second and third levels ("Maslow's Hierarchy and the Internet" - now there's a scientific paper that needs writing...)

The kickback is a mere trifle...but nonetheless, full disclosure is required...

I added an Amazon search and some book links on the right margin (hissss, booo!!!!), but more for encouraging folks to read up on topics related to this blog, than to buy books through my referral.

You can always go directly to Amazon and bypass my cut....I won't be hurt in the least...

Besides driving another blog into shape this past week, I've been trying to coalesce my thoughts on the results of our Candidate Blogger and his sit-dive into the shark tank of Intellectual Property (IP)...

Doc Searles has a wonderful article that includes the Internet, Software, File Sharing (aka: P2P, Napster, et al.), Copyright and closes with the point that Howard Dean the "Now-Front-Tier-Candidate" would not exist were it not for the current state of the Internet, something that is under fire from all angles.

If there were ever a "significant non-infringing use" to be made of the Internet, then Nodal Politics is it.

As the Internet goes, so goes Democracy in its newest incarnations....a Greater Democracy.

But Howard Dean's action on these seemingly technical issues is not just about whether or not I get to send you a digital copy of my mix tape, or even make it in the first place. It's also about greater possibilities of civic participation, governmental clarity, improved education and growth economics - as I posted to the Governor's question re: the infamous Digital Divide within our own country, much less the world...

"Governor -

To second [another comment]’s points, with an important analogy back to one of you current positions.…

Just as gun control may cap gun access / content / demand but does not eliminate gun violence root causes, deploying broadband infrastructure “everywhere to everyone” ensures neither access, nor content nor demand.

Policy encouraging:
- open access over both current and new open source infrastructures;
- more content to the public domain and strengthened digital fair use; and
- increased demand through better basic/civic education, more open government data and processes
…will be of greater benefit to driving the desired infrastructure availability.

Augmenting “Universal Net Tone” will also be enormously cheaper after these policies give entrepreneurs the tools to create more, new and cheaper markets in hardware, software and services."

This bundle of ideas is one to which I'm glad to subscribe...