3pointD.com

One of the best things about going to tech conferences is running into Doc Searls, senior editor of Linux Journal and an original author of the cluetrain manifesto. Doc is really smart and really nice, and he comes at technology solidly from the point of view of the people who use it, which I think is the most important angle. I just came across this podcast of a talk Doc gave last December, in which he talks about pending legislation, cable companies, and the importance of keeping the Internet and World Wide Web an open place for the creation of and access to content and information — or at least of deciding whether that’s what it’s actually going to be. Definitely recommended listening.

A recent episode of Leo Laporte’s This Week in Tech covers similar topics, and there’s also a Webcast, linked from WorldChanging.com, of Harvard’s Jonathan Zittrain speaking this week on much the same stuff. I haven’t listened to the Zittrain ‘cast yet, but I’m starting to feel it’s time we all paid more attention to these things. The technology, law and commercial shifts that are being pushed at us recently have begun to threaten the status of the Internet as a place that’s as open and protected as the streets of our hometowns. The Internet was never quite that, but it may be time to push back.