Wheeler Urges Tech Leaders to Help President Understand Importance of Open Internet

Ex-FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said tech leaders at a presidential meeting this Thursday with "America's technology leadership" should help President Donald Trump see "the importance of keeping the internet fast, fair, and open." "We are on the cusp of another internet reinvention called Web 3.0, and its opening act, the internet of things," Wheeler said in a Brookings Institution blog post Tuesday. "Whether the promise of Web 3.0 is fully realized, however, will depend on the policy decisions we make today -- specifically, the kinds of policy decisions that will hopefully be discussed with the president. The promise of Web 3.0 is finished without open networks to connect it. Precisely, the kind of openness the Trump FCC is trying to remove by undoing the existing Open Internet Rules." Wheeler said Web 3.0 is different from 1.0, which made the internet available through browsers and search engines, and 2.0 which "democratized" the internet with user-generated content. "Today, the web is a platform for requesting and displaying existing information. In contrast, Web 3.0 is the orchestration of raw intelligence to produce something new. Embedded and connected microchips in everything from cars to coffeepots flood the network with a tsunami of intelligence that Web 3.0 channels to create new products and services," he wrote. McKinsey estimates 3.0's "transformation in business practices and models" could have an $11 trillion impact on the global economy, but the "benefits require being free of interference from those who run the networks that take us to the internet," he wrote. His comments echoed a speech he gave at a Silicon Flatirons event in February (see 1702130035).