New America Foundation. April 1, 2013.
The paper examines the emerging global phenomenon of mobile leapfrogging in Internet access. Leapfrogging refers to the process in which new Internet users are obtaining access by mobile devices and are skipping the traditional means of access: personal computers. This leapfrogging of PC-based Internet access has been hailed in many quarters as an important means of rapidly and inexpensively reducing the gap in Internet access between developed and developing nations, thereby reducing the need for policy interventions to address this persistent digital divide. [Note: contains copyrighted material].
http://oti.newamerica.net/sites/newamerica.net/files/policydocs/MobileLeapfrogging_Final.pdf [PDF format, 20 pages].
The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. February 2013.
This report finds that the United States has made rapid progress in broadband deployment, performance, and price, as well as adoption when measured as computer-owning households who subscribe to broadband. Considering the high cost of operating and upgrading broadband networks in a largely suburban nation, the prices Americans pay for broadband services are reasonable and the performance of our networks is better than in all but a handful of nations that have densely populated urban areas and have used government subsidies to leap-frog several generations of technology ahead of where the market would go on its own in response to changing consumer demands. [Note: contains copyrighted material].
http://www2.itif.org/2013-whole-picture-america-broadband-networks.pdf [PDF format, 77 pages].
New America Foundation. March 26, 2013.
In the United States and around the world, elected leaders seem paralyzed by information overload. Despite a wealth of information at our fingertips, high- quality, unbiased facts have become increasingly hidden in our noisy, saturated world. Worse, much of the public discourse has become routinely gridlocked, as proponents on each side of a debate regularly come to the table armed with their own “facts.” Faced with this deluge of information, the role of congressional staffers is increasingly one of fact-checking rather than fact-finding. [Note: contains copyrighted material].
http://newamerica.net/sites/newamerica.net/files/policydocs/How_Do_They_Know.pdf [PDF format, 16 pages].
Knowledge @ Wharton. March 13, 2013.
Can technology set off a new boom in job creation? The question is a fundamental one for the American economy given that policy makers in Washington often look to the technology sector to pick up the slack in the employment market. Meanwhile, the fortunes of Silicon Valley start-ups continue to be closely followed, in part because of the spectacular wealth they can generate for their founders, but also because of the assumption that these new companies are a significant source of new employment. So it will likely disappoint many people that four prominent economists assembled for a recent panel discussion to explore the link between technology and job creation were, in large part, bearish in their outlook. Some went so far as to suggest that technology actually increases unemployment and adds to other problems in the U.S. economy, notably the growing wage disparities between an extremely elite group of earners and everyone else. [Note: contains copyrighted material].
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/articlepdf/3211.pdf?CFID=82865300&CFTOKEN=80636567&jsessionid=a83070cd22b7cd6e1f9568263f2219735d25 [PDF format, 3 pages].
