If we’re going to spend billions of dollars per year in entitlements, it should be spent wisely. Yet we are pumping billions of dollars into the USF High Cost fund when a small fraction of that could instantly boost our broadband deployment significantly.

A federal court unsealed documents in Viacom’s copyright-infringement lawsuit against YouTube, and Viacom posted the documents, including revealing internal e-mails, to its Web site. Digital Society is reviewing the documents for insights into YouTube’s business practices and its attitudes about copyright law and online video content.

William Sims Bainbridge is a highly decorated social scientist who received his Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University and who has studied and written on sociological issues ranging from religious cults to various aspects of society. But in his latest work he has turned to the emerging civilizations of virtual realms.

Ford and Spiwak examine the FCC’s national broadband plan by asking, “How do we know whether the [programs within the plan] are successful?” Based on certain trends in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development rankings and data, they suggest that the plan’s goals for 2012 likely will push the United States to a ranking of 13th, with potential for 9th but no likelihood of downward movement in the rankings.

David Pogue and Walt Mossberg have posted their iPad reviews and I think it’s safe to say that we are at the dawn of a new computing era. I don’t believe it will kill the current paradigm, but it will create a new one. Will it appeal to tech geeks? Probably not but that doesn’t matter because it appeals to normal people who vastly outnumber geeks and even people who don’t or won’t use computers.