Today, Andrew Keen interviewed Bruce Mehlman’s co-chair at the Internet Innovation Alliance, David Sutphen. Sutphen is a “one-time General Council to Senator Ted Kennedy and a prominent Democratic activist both in technology policy and civil rights.” Keen says of Sutphen:
It is no coincidence that Sutphen’s interests span both technology and civil rights. For him, technology policy needs to focus on fostering innovation in order to guarantee the core civil right of all American workers: jobs. From prospective network neutrality legislation to guaranteeing protection against intellectual piracy to broadband policy, Sutphen argues that Obama needs to find common ground with business and identify core policy areas where successful technological innovation can once again drive the general prosperity of the American economy.
Among other things, Keen asked some interesting technology questions, including:
- Are advocates of network neutrality against innovation
- How to solve network neutrality issue
- How can Obama win back Silicon Valley
- Why access to broadband is a civil rights issue
Sutphen talks about the whole net neutrality debate being a sideshow to a greater issue of broadband access. He also walks through how not having Internet access costs people money every year.
Full interview at TechCrunch
Sutphen expressed similar thoughts about the impact of broadband access on communities of color when we caught up with him at the NewMe Conference in May.