"The Government’s $19.3 Billion
Auction of Spectrum (as of Round 61 on February 12, 2008) Why
don’t you know more about the government’s allocation of this vital natural
resource?"
Supper and Conversation with J.H. Snider,
Shorenstein Fellow
Tuesday, February 19, at 6 p.m.
Kalb Seminar Room, Taubman
275
Rsvp: camille_stevens@harvard.edu
The most valuable
natural resource of the information age is arguably the electromagnetic
spectrum, which is used for wireless transmission of information and is the
foundation of next generation portable media. The FCC is currently conducting
an auction of broadcast band spectrum (part of the so-called “digital TV
transition”), which in its first 61 rounds (as of February 12, 2008) had raised
$19.3 billion, making it the largest government auction in U.S. history. With
so much money at stake, the press confused and scared by the issue’s complexity, and the public ignorant and apathetic about the
issue, spectrum policy has become a paradigmatic example of special interest
politics and media failure. J.H. Snider’s most recent report on U.S. spectrum
policy and politics is The
Art of Spectrum Lobbying: America's $480 Billion Spectrum Giveaway, How it Happened, and How to Prevent it from Recurring.
Brief Bio
J. H. Snider, is a
scholar who has written extensively about new technology and democracy. He is
the president of iSolon.org and an affiliated researcher at Columbia
University’s Institute for Tele-Information. He was research director for the
New America Foundation, a Washington, DC-based think tank. His books include Speak
Softly and Carry a Big Stick: How Local TV Broadcasters Exert Political Power
and Future Shop. Snider has a Ph.D. in American Government from
Northwestern University, an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School, and an
undergraduate degree in Social Studies from Harvard College. His work at the
Shorenstein Center will focus on the role of information policy in enhancing
democracy.