Earlier this month, the Progressive Policy Institute hosted Enabling the Internet, a fascinating discussion with five of America’s digital policy pioneers – the leaders first tasked with creating the legal framework for the Internet. The mid-90s and early 2000s was a period of explosive change for the Internet. Policymakers were asking themselves unprecedented questions about how to deal with this burgeoning, rapidly changing technology.
Questions such as: Should we leave it alone? Should we regulate it? And if Internet rules were established, how would those rules work? Sitting on the panel was Larry Irving, former Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Administrator of the NTIA, The Honorable Bill Kennard, former U.S. Ambassador to the European Union and former FCC Chairman, The Honorable Karen Kornbluh, former U.S. Ambassador to the OECD, Ira Magaziner, former Senior Advisor to the President for Policy Development, and Michael Powell, former FCC Chairman and current President & CEO of NCTA. Each shared their experience, reflecting on the birth of the Internet and how their choices resonate through to today. Check out this highlight video of the panelists’ sharing memories of how they first considered Internet policy. For a video of the full event, click here.