November 10th, 2006
"Oh, great," some techs say: "Pelosi's crowd wants to tax and regulate me to death!!"
I'm just back this morning from the ISPCON conference in Santa Clara, Calif.
This conference heavily draws from the ranks of Web hosting companies, small Internet Service Providers, and technology vendors who sell to each segment.
The event- which I cover here- took place in parallel time with this week's U.S. Congressional elections, and the news of a new Democratic majority headed by that "San Francisco liberal," Nancy Pelosi.
While I point to the expert analysis of my colleagues Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache for a detailed policy-implementation view of how things in Washington may change for the technology sector when Pelosi and co. get the car keys, I have to tell you something.
The people I spoke with at ISPCON, and overheard in the hallways, are of one of two minds.
They sense more regulation and higher taxes coming from this new crowd.
They beieve that with a pro-free market FCC and a President with a veto pen, nothing really bad will happen in the next two years.
Keep in mind that neither big business nor small business likes to be regulated or taxed. I think this is somewhat self-predictive. It takes an independent streak to start a company, as so many attendees at ISPCON have done. When you are an independent-minded technology entrepreneur you are by proxy an individual who rather than taking orders from a hierarchy, blazed your own path.
And for those technologists who work for big companies, they've probably drank the "big government is bad" Kool-Aid too.
But apart from technology entrepreneurs, there are technology users. Maybe users like you, who want to see a legislation that would, for example, promote true net neutrality.
Lots of competing interests. Hey, ain't that America- you and me.
An America, who has just voted.
So speaking of, let's do a poll, OK?
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Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
