Technology | Page 33 | Discovery Institute

^{John Wohlstetter
January 21, 2003
Technology}

Dumber than “Dumb and Dumber”

_{John Wohlstetter
January 21, 2003
Technology}

Near the end of his tenure as WorldCom CEO, John Sidgmore told a trade association audience: “If you get away from the debt and fraud, this is a tremendous company with tremendous asset [sic]. It needs to be saved and it will be.” And if you get away from the terrorism and mass murder, al- Qai’da is a transnational affinity group, right? Read More ›

^{Multiple Authors
January 1, 2003
Technology}

Advisor Soapbox:

_{Multiple Authors
January 1, 2003
Technology}

Original article While the U.S. has supplied a meager form of broadband to 20 million households (20% of the total), Korea has connected some 11 million households (73% of the Korean total) with real multimegabit pipes. While the U.S. pretends that the Internet boom was a scam and a delusion, the Koreans now run one-third of their economic transactions through Read More ›

^{John Wohlstetter
November 13, 2002
Technology}

9-11 Plus One

_{John Wohlstetter
November 13, 2002
Technology}

The year since “the world changed” has been marked by many changes in American life. By solid margins, both houses of Congress have just voted to authorize the President to use preemptive force against an adversary, based upon apprehension of a threat of mass terror whose imminence is the subject of sharp disagreement. Read More ›

^{Bret Swanson
October 28, 2002
Technology}

The Tech Comeback Is Real

_{Bret Swanson
October 28, 2002
Technology}

With deflation under control, the case for a U.S. economic comeback gets stronger every day. But the conventional wisdom is that two of our most important and hardest hit sectors, technology and telecom, have so much capacity and so little confidence that it will be many years before they return to health. Telecom investment is down 75% since 2000, there Read More ›

^{John Wohlstetter
October 22, 2002
Technology}

The Telecom Meltdown’s Gang of Four — Plus Gore

_{John Wohlstetter
October 22, 2002
Technology}

First the prequel: In the immediate aftermath of the passing of China’s revolutionary leaders, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, a claque of left-wing hardliners known as the “Gang of Four” sponsored by Mao’s widow, Jiang Qing, launched an effort to block pro-market reforms. They did not succeed, and China began a long, robust economic expansion. America’s has its own “Telecom Read More ›

^{John Wohlstetter
August 21, 2002
Technology}

Local and Long Distance

_{John Wohlstetter
August 21, 2002
Technology}

WorldCom’s spectacular implosion seems to have caught many regulators by surprise. They missed it partly because they were unable to see that the core voice business of the long distance industry was collapsing. Long distance managements were loudly trumpeting the Internet Age, when data revenues would rise so steeply that voice could be free. That vision likely will come true — eventually. But data revenues in recent years did not grow fast enough to replace losses in voice revenues; this made inevitable WorldCom’s bankruptcy. Read More ›

^{John Wohlstetter
July 19, 2002
Technology}

Tsar of Telephony

_{John Wohlstetter
July 19, 2002
Technology}

The Supreme Court recently considered the future of telecommunications regulatory policy, and responded by resurrecting a ghost from the bygone era of monopoly telephony. This threatens the growth of robust facilities-based telecommunications market competition — most notably, that for emerging broadband data and video services. Read More ›

This image was a complete experiment. I wasn’t what the final pic would look like. Essentially this is a photo of my daughter’s My Little Pony fibre-optic tree viewed through a prism. The prism was propped up on a couple of empty wine bottles and some tins of baked beans. I think the effect works!

^{John Wohlstetter
June 28, 2002
Technology}

The Rise and Fall of the Ebbers Empire

_{John Wohlstetter
June 28, 2002
Technology}

WorldCom, one-time poster-boy telecom firm for the New Economy, lies in ruins. Its 19-year saga mirrors that of the once-vibrant long-distance industry. Its imminent demise, while hastened by scandal, was inevitable. The seedlings of WorldCom were planted on January 8, 1982 when Charles Brown, last chairman of legendary Ma Bell, capitulated to antitrust chief William Baxter. Facing imminent defeat in Read More ›

^{John Wohlstetter
May 31, 2002
Technology}

FCC Reform

_{John Wohlstetter
May 31, 2002
Technology}

It seems almost churlish to suggest reforms for an agency whose current commissioners have shown signs of a welcome shift away from harmful policies of the past. It amounts to penalizing those doing pretty well now for acts of predecessors who did great damage. But there is no assurance that some future constellation of commissioners will retain good judgment, and there is ever the problem of attitudes among longtime staff. Thus, certain reforms are appropriate notwithstanding today’s solid cast at the agency. Read More ›

^{John Wohlstetter
May 3, 2002
Technology}

The Enron Network

_{John Wohlstetter
May 3, 2002
Technology}

It has been widely predicted that the collapse of Enron and its politically explosive aftermath will not spur much in the way of regulatory changes, save those pertaining to accounting, executive compensation and corporate governance. These, of course, may well prove far-reaching. But in another way Enron’s impact will reverberate far beyond specific regulatory changes. Enron will, by revaluing specific companies, radically transform industry structures in the telecommunications industry Read More ›