Via Fortune Magazine, IDC reports that Smartphone sales has exceeded Personal Computers (PCs) for the first time in Q4-2010. IDC also projects that Smartphones will expand its lead within the next few years with smartphone prices dropping rapidly and this has huge ramifications for several industries. What we think of as “computers” and “broadband” will have to undergo some radical revisions.

Says the National Academy of Engineering: [In 1988] the first transatlantic fiber-optic cable is installed . . . . The shark-proof TAT-8 is dedicated by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, who praises “this maiden voyage across the sea on a beam of light.” Linking North America and France, the 3,148-mile cable is capable of handling [...]

Deep packet inspection or web crawlers had nothing to do with the Egyptian Internet shutdown, but Free Press rarely lets facts get in the way of exploiting a good crisis to call for government hearings. Ironically, it was Free Press asking the FCC to regulate Internet speech for decency.

Another interesting event tomorrow to which you cannot go because it, like the Kauffman affair, is full up – the Broadband Breakfast Club’s session on China and Intellectual Property, featuring Fuli Chen, IPR Attache for the Embassy of China and former Director of the International Law and IPR divisions at the Department of Treaty and Law [...]

Tomorrow – The Rules for Growth, the 2011 Kauffman [Foundation] State of Entrepreneurship Address and Luncheon at the National Press Club, “convened to explore effective, low-cost ways to promote innovation and accelerate U.S. economic growth, emphasizing changes in law and legal institutions that do not add to the national deficit.” (The event is sold out, so to [...]

Harris takes questions about mobile apps privacy and provides answers based on the CDT privacy perspective. Some of the questions are ones that are important to ask and will likely be discussed in the tech community for some time.

I would think that most of us would agree that there are certain less than acceptable ways of talking in the public square. Now even less than acceptable language, even that of the coined “hate speech” variety of communication is still protected speech. The philosophy of deterring certain types of speech through government regulation is something that I and many of my colleagues feel is a 1st Amendment violation. Most notably is the Fairness Doctrine which continues its journey via Mark Lloyd, and the Internet version suggested by Cass Sunstein creating “Internet sidewalks” of opposing viewpoints across the Web.

AEI’s Nick Schulz has a very good video interview of Great Stagnation author Tyler Cowen.

I have no independent opinion on the current dispute about whether Bing uses Google results to improve its own, but for a sober extended discussion of the issue, go to SearchEngineLand, which ends by seeing both sides: Perhaps we’ll get some detente going forward. But I’ll close with one last observation. PR is not leading [...]

The good news is that the adults seem to be taking over as the stakeholders in the Internet are increasingly aware that this is a joint problem, and not a Hobbesian war of all against all. No one knows the optimum path, but one principle should be to minimize the role of government and maximize the role of the private actors.