<<September 19, 2006>>
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John M. Eger
Van Deerlin Chair of Communication and Public Policy
Executive Director, International Center for Communications
College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts
San Diego State University
5500 Campanile Drive, PFSA 160
San Diego, CA 92182-4522
619-594-6933
619-594-6910
Fax: 619-594-4488
jeger@mail.sdsu.edu
http://www.smartcommunities.org/
http://www.smartcommunities.org/guidebook.html
http://www.iicom.org/intermedia/july2001/eger.htm
Dear E-Colleagues:
(1) John EgerÕs last essay was;
(08/19/06)
John Eger's another interesting essay on creativity and innovation
http://tinyurl.com/he85b
(2) ATTACHMENT I below is John EgerÕs revised version of the following;
(02/20/06)
John Eger's essay "Forging a Creative Community for the New Creative
Economy"
http://makeashorterlink.com/?X465222DC
Dear John:
Sorry for my belated action on this correction.
(2) ATTACHMENT II is another very interesting essay he sent to me for distribution to
our list members.
Pls enjoy reading it.
Best, Tak
ATTACHMENT
I
From: john eger
<jeger@mail.sdsu.edu>
Date: Sun, 19
Mar 2006 16:58:58 -0800
To: john eger
<jeger@mail.sdsu.edu>
Subject: FYI....An
earlier version had minor errors ....please accept my apologies.
In The News
Freeing Cities
From Telco and Cable Monopolies
March
18, 2006 By John M. Eger
John M. Eger,
of San Diego State University is the Executive Director of the International
Center for Communications, and president of the World Foundation for Smart
Communities. Eger headed CBS Broadcast International which he established, and
was senior vice president of the CBS Broadcast Group. From 1971-1973, he was
legal assistant to the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, and
from 1974-1976 served as telecommunications advisor to Presidents Richard Nixon
and Gerald Ford and was director of the White House Office of
Telecommunications Policy. Eger opened the
California Broadband Roundtable on March 15 in San Jose with this
presentation:
I believe
broadband today is as important as waterways, railways and highways were in an
earlier era. Unfortunately, this concern, indeed urgency, is not widely held.
From a policy standpoint, clearly, at the federal, state and local level, we
have lost our way, much to our peril.
In the early 1970s I was part of an administration that helped break up
AT&T -- not because they didn't have the finest telephone system in the
world, they did, but because AT&T had become an impediment to the
development and nurturing of a new knowledge-based economy and society.
Some of you may find this hard to believe, but in the 60' and even the 1970s,
AT&T didn't allow French phones to be connected to its network. Such attachments,
they argued, would destroy the finest telephone system in the world. It took
many years of regulatory reform -- not to mention billions of dollars in
litigation -- to get those French phones attached to the network to create the
first specialized common carrier, known as MCI, and to give birth to
teleprocessing to connect computers to the network and help usher in the
modern-day Internet.
Clearly we were ahead of the pack. Most countries had not yet deregulated or
privatized their postal telephone and telegraph companies, or PTTs as they were
known. In 1996, as you recall, we ushered in what was considered to be landmark
telecommunications reform with the telecom act of that year that opened the
regulatory floodgates to new entry.
Wall Street quickly followed by opening its wallets to any business plan that
had the word Internet attached to it. As we know now, after just a few short
years, and some two trillion dollars -- more than it cost to build the
interstate highway system -- most of the new competition went bankrupt, or
simply died trying to find an opening.
COVAD -- one of the new broadband local exchange carriers, as they were called
-- said it died of a thousand cuts, referring to the difficulties they had
getting the Baby Bells to sublease their facilities; a critical first step to
competing in the marketplace for new information services.
Today, according to the ITU or the OECD in Paris, we're either 13th or 15th,
depending on how you interpret the report in deploying broadband communications.
Smaller countries like Korea, Singapore or Japan, are leading the world by
offering broadband [much faster] and at a fraction of the cost.
Even in the Middle East, tiny Dubai -- which we've heard a lot about recently
-- boasts the largest Internet facility in the world, which they practically
give away as in incentive to the multi-national and global companies as an
enticement to headquarter their Middle East/North Africa [operations] there.
The telcos, and now the cable companies, are clearly fighting for leadership as
America's next monopoly to dominate all telecommunications. If Ed Whitacre
[AT&T Chairman and CEO Edward E. Whitacre, who led the merger of SBC and
AT&T] has his way, even though the modern AT&T is quite different, he
would put Humpty Dumpty together again and emerge as the single largest
provider.
Sadly, this is not much improvement in 30 years. Instead of one large telephone
company, we now have, for all practical purposes, two large entities dominating
the market. Clearly satellites and wireless communications offer the promise of
changing the shape of the market. Even the electric companies might still enter
the field and provide a third and fourth entity as a counter weight to the
cable and telcos.
For the present, however, the cable and telcos have joined forces and are
blocking what I consider to be the single largest user that must retool and
reinvent itself for America to succeed, let alone survive, in the new global
economy. I'm talking of course about the city.
Right now in state capitols across America, legislation is being discussed or
enacted to prevent the municipality [from playing] any role whatsoever in
shaping its new information infrastructure. Philadelphia, as you know,
announced one of the first citywide wireless initiatives in the country. Within
weeks the Pennsylvania Legislature and the governor signed a bill that would
preclude any other Pennsylvania city from doing the same.
Over 100 other American cities have expressed the desire to provide such
municipal services. Their city councils, their mayors, as well as their state
legislators have threatened them. They have been told in no uncertain terms
that the telecommunications business belongs to the private sector. Read that:
the existing cable or telecommunications firms.
Most cities -- already subsidized in some small way by a cable franchise -- are
not willing to make the investment and possibly lose that subsidy. I'm
convinced most, however, are simply afraid to act in the face of such state and
local obstacles.
If this roundtable can do anything, we must find a way to free the cities.
The city traditionally has been the center of all commerce and in the wake of a
global knowledge economy, it is the cities who could be the incubators of
creativity and innovation which will be the hallmarks of our success in the
future. As I think you know, cities of the future aren't cities in the usual
sense. As Kenichii Ohmae, author of The Borderless Economy has put it: "There are no
national economies anymore; only a global economy -- which no one's in charge
of -- and a constellation of regional economies with strong cities at the
core."
Given this devolution of power which has occurred worldwide and a redefinition
of wealth -- which is information broadly defined -- renewing and reinventing
our cities is a strategy that the state of California and the country must
employ. California took an important step in 1997 when Caltrans created the
Smart Communities program.
As I understand from the Caltrans folks that idea came out of the Northridge
earthquake. But for the cell phone and the computer, people in the Wilson
administration observed, Northridge was cut off from the mainstream of economic
development.
Caltrans concluded then, rather than build more roads and bridges -- there
wasn't any more room for those anyway -- maybe we could begin to build
information highways to ensure that what happened in Northridge would never
happen again to any other California city. Frankly, I think the Smart
Communities program was successful in raising awareness. We ran out of time and
we ran out of money as a new administration took the reins of power in
Sacramento.
But such programs can be reinstituted. Perhaps this time with more clarity and
more muscle than before. Time is of the essence.
As most of you know, particularly if you read Thomas Friedman's The World is
Flat, Forrester
Research predicts we're going to lose 3.2 million jobs over the next several
years. The University of California at Berkeley says the figure is much greater.
They predict a loss of about 10 percent of all white-collar jobs because of
globalization.
That two trillion dollars we spent building the new information highways that
are connected to nothing here in the U.S., at least internationally are
providing the grid for the outsourcing of low-cost services. Friedman says it's
even cheaper to outsource the font end of your order at McDonalds to Bangalore,
than it is to hire someone on premises.
This outsourcing, however, is not limited to low-end service jobs alone.
Radiologists are now finding that under pressure from the HMOs, more hospitals
and clinics are sending their X-rays and MRIs to Bangalore for processing. A
radiologist in Bangalore makes about $15,000 per year. Because they're working
while we're sleeping, it's not only cheaper, but more efficient for them to do
the analysis.
I am only touching the surface of our dilemma. We need to act. California --
which if it were a country would be about the sixth largest economy in the
world -- can and should take the lead. Let me throw out today just a handful of
the things perhaps this panel can address to help us with an agenda for moving
forward.
* Why doesn't the state aggregate
demand -- by that I mean take the use of every state agency for telecommunications
services and perhaps ask other local and federal agencies to join forces with
it -- and begin creating a statewide network which others can link to provide
statewide ubiquitous Internet service. I'm not advocating it do this itself,
rather that it find a willing coalition of cable, telco and other service
providers. Maybe a marriage with CENIC -- the University-controlled
gigabyte-or-bust effort.
* Both from a regulatory and economic
perspective develop statewide policies that develop, support and encourage
municipal efforts. Cities not only need to know that it's all right to begin
planning the new information infrastructure for their region, they need the
economic and political incentive to do so and the support and counsel of the
state.
* The electrics play a large and promising role in developing
an alternative supplier. Here too, clarity from the PUC, the administration and
the Assembly would do much to provide that support and guidance.
Copyright¨ 2005 e.Republic, Inc. All rights reserved.
eRepublic, Inc. 100 Blue Ravine Rd., Folsom, CA 95630
--
John M. Eger
Van Deerlin Chair of Communication and Public Policy
Executive Director, International Center for Communications
San Diego State University
5500 Campanile Drive
PFSA 160
San Diego, CA
92182-4522
telephone 6195946910
ATTACHMENT
II
From:
john eger
<jeger@mail.sdsu.edu>
Date: Mon, 21
Aug 2006 15:09:32 -0700
To: <Jeger@mail.sdsu.edu>
Subject: FYI..from
this weeks San Diego Business Journal
SAN
DIEGO BUSINESS JOURNAL August 21, 2006
We Must Redesign High
School, University Curricula to Reflect 21st Century Competition
Opinion - John M. Eger
If America does capture the high ground in this latest effort to lead the world
economy ... it will do so because the hearse is now at the back door of our
current economic situation.
Most economists now seem to agree that the emerging so-called creative and
innovative economy represents America's salvation.
Apple Computer's iPod is often cited as an example of the kind of innovation most
people are talking about.
Providing easy, legal access to lots of music (iTunes) was something no one had
yet managed.
It was not simply making a slick piece of hardware; it was the design of a
whole system that made Apple the leader in the innovation economy.
As we discuss the foreshadowing of a whole economy based upon creativity and
innovation - the dawn of the Creative Age as the Nomura Research Institute put
it - we are more acutely aware of the importance of reinventing our business
strategies, our corporations, our communities, our schools, our housing and
land-use policies and more. Nothing can remain the same if we are to survive,
let alone succeed, in this new global economy.
For example, Michael Porter in his book "The Competitive Advantage of
Nations," pointed out the importance of "economic clusters" -
"Geographic concentrations of interconnected companies, specialized
suppliers, service providers and associated institutions in a particular field
that are present in a nation or region."
Such clusters, he said, are central to survival in the wake of an uncertain
global economy. Today, corporations and the communities they serve must put
themselves at the forefront of this sweeping change in the structure of the
world in which we live and work.
It is imperative that we begin in earnest to attract, retain and nurture the
creative and innovative work force we know we need; and in the process, create
a new overlay of our land-use planning as well.
Cities across the United States have to change the lenses in their cameras and
their parochial thinking about land use, the transformative value of technology
and the urgent need to reinvent our schools.
We need to redesign our high school and college curricula in particular, to
focus on preparing students for this new competition. While creative
industries, according to Americans for the Arts, are defined as arts-related,
creativity and innovation are vital to the success of all businesses.
Sadly, if America does capture the high ground in this latest effort to lead
the world economy by being first in the demand for creativity and innovation,
it will do so because the hearse is now at the back door of our current
economic situation.
Unless we awaken to the realities, our graduates will not find the work they
want and need, the purchasing power of the average family will continue its
downward spiral and the state of America's prowess in both the economic and
political arena will be lost.
John M. Eger is the Van Deerlin chairman in communications and public policy at
San Diego State University and president of the World Foundation for Smart
Communities.
--
John M. Eger
Van Deerlin Chair of Communication and Public Policy
Executive Director, International Center for Communications
San Diego State University
5500 Campanile Drive
PFSA 160
San Diego, CA
92182-4522
telephone 6195946910
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