As a regular weekly reader of Newsweek and "The Technologist" column by Stephen Levy, I was very disappointed to read Mr. Levy's lazy and very one-sided take on Net Neutrality.
In his Newsweek piece of October 9th, Mr Levy referenced a breakfast he had with Susan Crawford and Craig Newmark on Susan Crawford's self-proclaimed "OneWebDay" ("a geeky parallel to Earth Day" Levy described.)
It was obvious that his article was basically a straight regurgitatation of Susan and Craig's datatopian philosophy on Net Neutrality in his weekly column. Having debated the issue recently with Susan at a recent conference and done dueling commentaries with Craig on National Public Radio, it is not hard to discern that Susan/Craig apparently were the sole source of Mr. Levy's knowledge on the subject. It is also pretty obvious that they directed him to Senator Stevens, problably after summarily bashing the Senator's knowlege of the subject.
Maybe to get accross the point to Mr. Levy -- that there are two sides to this important issue -- I need to name a day -- like Susan did to get his attention.
The day I go to breakfast with Mr. Levy, I would declare "CriticalThinkingDay" where intelligent people around the world would open their minds and learn both sides of the Net Neutrality issue and make up their minds based on the facts and the merits, not who happened to schmooze them.
While I respect Susan and Craig for their achievements, I have little respect for the intellectual rigor of their position on net neutrality. Their argument basically boils down to political assertions that this is the way the Internet "should be," but there is precious little accuracy to their asserted "facts" and there is even less substance to their reasoning.
I know I frustrate the other side by wanting to debate the facts and merits of net neutrality, and they surely frustrate me with the vacuousness of their arguments.
I wonder if there are others yearning for more critical thinking from the journalist/columnist community...?
