Comcast cites John Dvorak in FCC filing--for being oh so very wrong
Technology columnist John Dvorak was cited by Comcast in its defense of BitTorrent throttling this week--but not in an especially flattering way.
The cable operator is trying to convince the Federal Communications Commission to leave it alone by way of background, invoking the we've-taken-major-risks and it's-a-dynamic-industry arguments. Here's an excerpt from its filing with the FCC on Tuesday, which I reformatted slightly for easier reading:
Given the widespread availability and use of broadband today, it is easy to forget that, as recently as 1995, only about 17.5 million U.S. adults accessed the Internet, and virtually every one of them did so by way of a dial-up connection that had a top speed of only 56 thousand bits per second.When Congress in 1996 expressed the hope that "high-speed, switched, broadband telecommunications capability that enables users to originate and receive high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video telecommunications" would be developed and deployed to all Americans on a "reasonable and timely" basis, the prospect of that occurring anytime soon was remote.
There was no obvious path to reach that destination. Moreover, the notion that cable operators could lead the way in that deployment was widely dismissed by experts as technically infeasible and derided as an "interesting-sounding idea[] that will attract what venture capitalists call dumb money."*
* John C. Dvorak, "The Looming Cable Modem Fiasco," PC Magazine, Sept. 12, 1995, at 89 ("The noisiest buzz in the industry lately has been over the emerging use of cable TV systems to provide fast network data transmissions using a device called a cable modem. But the likelihood of this technology succeeding is zilch." (emphasis added)).
Columnists are paid to be provocative, of course, and few have perfect records of prognostication. Then again, you can see other Dvorak predictions at his Wikiquotes page, including this classic: "The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a 'mouse.' There is no evidence that people want to use these things."
Declan McCullagh, CNET News' chief political correspondent, chronicles the intersection of politics and technology. He has covered politics, technology, and Washington, D.C., for more than a decade, which has turned him into an iconoclast and a skeptic of anyone who says, "We oughta have a new federal law against this." E-mail Declan. 
In other news, the sun rose in the east today, and will set in the
west. Also, John Dvorak is still wrong about everything.
really does is he listens to the buzz in the industry, then offers a
different opinion. What he really does is try to get people to
think on both sides of the fence. See the good and the bad. I
read his columns since '92. OK, sometimes his comments are
harsh, like the Barbie iBook fiasco. Just remember, he is
provoking thought, not predicting the future. Oh, and I bet you
he is laughing at Comcast for quoting him, He knows he was
wrong, and most likely going to be wrong when he made those
comments.
The amazing thing, and I mean amazing to the point of making me wonder who thinks it's anything but illegal for the eagles at Comcast to be bringing home paychecks, is that they seem to actually think that's a relevant argument that should be given more credence than, say, the possibility of grasshopper racing being made an Olympic event!
It's just plain stupid, I'm sorry. They should be heavily regulated, monitored and forced to explain even so little as opening a window at corporate headquarters, if for no more than trying to foist that asinine argument upon intelligent folk!
So typical of comcast!
- Speed of Technology
- by techleslie March 25, 2008 1:43 PM PDT
- I don't understand why they would use a quote from that long ago. How long does it take for tech advancements to double? Seriously, a quote from 13 years ago?
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