I didn't realize Tim Wu had gotten into politics. This makes me very happy.<p>Tim Wu wrote the <i>The Master Switch</i> [1], which explains how US media/telecom wound up the way it is today -- how the dominant players came about in various industries (radio, broadcast and cable TV, movies, telephones), and the events that led to the legislative/regulatory environment we have today. The book also explains how IP laws (patents, copyright, etc) have shaped history.<p><i>The Master Switch</i> should be required reading before discussing such topics on Hacker News.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Master-Switch-Information-Empires/dp/0307390993" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/The-Master-Switch-Information-Empires/...</a>
The democratic machinery in New York is pretty frantic with their GOTV efforts, as this is a realy lame election cycle with hardly anything up for contest in a meaningful way. In my area the "hot" race is over the judges who oversee wills, adoption and probate.<p>The polling for likely voters must look better for Wu, as I've gotten literally dozens of telephone calls and mailers. If Wu doesn't lose big, it's pretty humiliating for the governor, who has to date managed to rule with a fairly iron fist.
Unfortunately, when he's had anything to say recently, it has fed my concerns about uninformed net neutrality legislation, namely that he doesn't seem to understand the difference between prioritization within the network and peering.<p>This legislation has to be designed by people who know what the wiring and working network configurations of the internet look like, which is a problem because people see that as the industry self-regulating.
It's really tragic, as a politically interested Columbia student I hadn't realized who he was, or that he was running, until this afternoon. :(