Michael Powell: the reluctant planner
Michael Powell is a frustrating figure. He alternates from brilliance to near incomprehensibility to admirable hard-headedness to shoulder-shrugging cynicism in the space of a single paragraph. This and more are reasons enough to read the Reason interview with him.
I’m increasingly excited that I can actually talk to you about your TiVo and what that means for convergence. I can talk about your WiFi network at home. I can talk to my son about a cell phone, and he knows what I’m talking about. For the first time, I actually have neighbors who know what it means that digital transition gets spectrum back. Because they never had a reason to think about spectrum. That was the mystery world of broadcasting, and no one really paid attention to it. But now they do, because they can actually imagine that spectrum belongs to people in their own homes. What I love about WiFi is it’s a way of saying you, not some institution, own the spectrum in your home.