The Gordian Knot:  Political Gridlock on the Information Highway
by Neuman, McKnight & Solomon

A way to 'cut the knot' on the mess of Communication Policy

What is a Gordian Knot?

• Alexander the Great and the history of the Gordian Knot:  victory over complex technological problems
• http://www.gordiansolutions.com/TheKnot.htm
• http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_9_01.html

The Gordian Knot:  Political Gridlock on the Information Highway

• Just like the examples above w/ Alexander the Great:  Today's Policy is an entangled mess - and might require a bold, insightful solution to get rid of the mess
• The Telecommunication Act of 1996 tries to untie the knot a string at a time instead of cutting the knot
   
• In Communication regulation, there are two schools of thought:
  • those who value free market
  • those who value some regulation (which is often not up to date with the state of what they're trying to regulate)
     
• speaks of NII and GII:  National Information Infrastructure / Global Information Infrastructure
   
• Historical influence for network policy:
  • railway policy:  which took 50 years of political gridlock to stop price rigging, stock manipulation, monopolies, etc that were screwing the consumers
  • highway policy:  good historical fight between private construction / government control
  • today, CEOs are trying to push government out of the way (network policies)
     
• What is the ideal solution?  Book concludes that we need to cut the knot and have an Open Communications Infrastructure
  • monopolies are less likely to form today, because the power has shifted to the user / consumer level (railroad problem unlikely to repeat)
  • on the Telecommunications Act of '96:  it attempt to untie the knot a string at a time, and should be known as the Communication Attorneys and Communication Consultants Employment Act of 1996
  • the OCI model will be best at speedily moving us along the information highway, towards an information intensive society of the 21st century