Free Internet Everywhere!

Jeff Jarvis has a lovely article about this, so I must give him props first.

I was thinking about this during the weekend as I updated (and reloaded) my Starbucks card, then registered on their site so that I can utilize the free wifi offered in their ubiquitous coffeehouses. This could come in handy if one's out and about and travelin'.

But the analogy of internet to interstate highways and/or water actually came up in Leo Laporte's TWITcast this weekend.

So I'm just sayin' I'm all for it. Not that I mind going into Starbucks and getting my chai with an espresso shot and a shot of sugar free vanilla (or caramel, depends on my mood) and groovin' on their net for no more than two hours (which is about as long as my laptop battery will last anyway), but I'd much rather have free internet all over the country, just like interstates and drinking fountains. Yes, there's always bottled water (sure, I'd like some faster internet! show me an ad or sign me up!) or toll roads (this internet brought to you by you, the one who's using it,'cause there's really not enough tax dollars in this area to support this infrastructure yet), but it would be totally cool to just wander anywhere in the US and still be able to find out what 1986 Tom Hanks movie marked the first English-speaking film role for Spanish star Christina Marsillach or what your new granddaughter looks like, right after she was born, live from the hospital.

Since the famous "series of tubes" speech by Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) a couple of years ago (which obviously shows precedent), we should start lobbying our congresscritters for government-sponsored, regulated, and neutral internet across the USA and her territories. After all, we have government-sponsored, regulated, and neutral (in the purest sense of the word) roads and water, why not the 'net? Because if we don't do it for the children, the terrorists will win. Spread the word, folks!

Only problem is, I don't see that the FCC is going away anytime soon. Sorry Mr. Cerf. You don't know how much I agree with your position (after all, if the FCC was gone, who would Donald Wildmon and the American Family Association write letters of protest to?), but you and I both know how impossible it would be to disassemble a federal agency. [In the spirit of full disclosure, neither the FCC nor the AFA represent anyone in my immediate family or my in-laws, 'cause we all know how to change the goddamn channel.]

I believe that the FCC is there simply to make life easier for everyone (except for those of us that want to communicate) and that they've been politicized as much (or more) than the Justice Department. So, here's my solution for fixing the FCC:

First, double the size of the commission, hire the right people and rotate them out every two and a half years. The right people would be anyone who doesn't work in Washington, anyone related to anyone who works in Washington, anyone who is good buddies with anyone who works in Washington, and they must have a deep abiding hatred of the bureaucratic slurdge that is Washington. The right people would be very tech-savvy, able to think for themselves, and consume a lot of media but do not work for the media or a media provider, nor are related to someone who works for the media or a media provider, nor are good buddies with anyone who works in the media or a media provider, and they have a deep abiding hatred of the starfrakkin' slurdge pit that is the media industry (as well as the media providers). Not only that, the commissioners' identities are hidden from everyone and they just go by a number, like in "The Prisoner."

Once selected, all the commissioners have to buy and set up their own wifi network, laptop, cellphone, smartphone, DVR, VCR, DVD, HDTV, satellite radio, satellite TV, DSL, VOIP, telephones, cable, and publicly-known IMs, blogs, e-mail, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, and Twitter accounts (with no assistants or assistance other than what a normal consumer would have access to). They'd have to subscribe to four newspapers, four general interest magazines, and three special-interest magazines.

They would secretly meet once a month in a different coffeehouse (with free wifi) in each state, and they would have to empty their inboxes weekly (I wouldn't make 'em do daily, simply because I doubt Merlin Mann would ever get on the commission, but I could be wrong). They would have to travel at least 10 days each month to examine different areas of the country. They also should find out how Asia and Europe handle their information infrastructure (even if that means traveling there) and what lessons can be learned from their experiences.

They must share hotel rooms and keep to a very tight expense budget during all their travel, and their office expenses must also be on a strict budget. They would not be allowed to wear a tie on the job, or be able to accept gifts over $5, and they would have to account for all expenditures to a bipartisan congressional sub-committee made up of grouchy former IRS accountants. They would be held accountable for their decisions by their MySpace and Facebook friends, which are monitored by their mothers-in-law or one of their former high-school English teachers.

If this were to happen, I predict that we'd have net neutrality on the books within six months and national broadband internet access available to all within a year or two. Cable TV prices will drop and NPR will get their budget quadrupled. Newspaper ad pages would go down and readership (online and offline) would be up. The second season of the revival of Orson Welles' Mercury Theater on a small Kansas AM radio station would be the most-anticipated event of 2012. A bronze statue of Jeff Jarvis holding Janet Jackson's... hand would be erected in Chicago and bloggers would get free drinks and laid more than all the living rock stars, movie stars and reality TV stars combined.

OK, maybe not ALL the reality TV stars, but one can dream.