Amidst the teeming transitions going on (I hear that Shaq is a member of the Phoenix Suns now!), some news goes out the window. It’s hard to keep tabs on all the 3200 job openings in President-Elect Barack Obama’s incoming administration team, plus his transition team, plus his supposition team, plus his Thanksgiving turkey team. Well, as some of the bigger name positions get filled by some of the bigger name people, I was pleased to learn about the FCC transition team co-chairs. Both Kevin Werbach and Susan Crawford are university professors (Werbach teaches legal studies and business ethics at Wharton, Crawford teaches communications and Internet law at Michigan), both are online gamers (Werbach with WoW, Crawford with Second Life), and both have a history of defending net neutrality.
I, for one, think that net neutrality is an extremely important issue currently, so it’s very reassuring to see these types of appointments. This has been a nice little week of good news from Daschle and Richardson to Waxman and Werbach.
More tech-type appointments at Wired.
More gamer info at CNN.
More chocolate at WWCF.
posted by Billy Susbuck
Werbach on the benefits of WoW:
“What the game does is provide an incentive for people to develop new software and ideas for collaborative production. Many of those ideas will translate to other group activities, including those within the business world. I think [massively multiplayer online games] will be, at a minimum, a significant testbed for these new technologies, because users see a direct benefit and are willing to experiment with new things.