People who both know Esther Dyson well and understand how she is selling out the interests of small businesses and entreprenuers via her imposition of ICANN's regulatory, IBM big-business-friendly regime over the internet have wondered why she is doing this. He book and all her propaganda says that she's really for the little guy whom the internet empowers. While remarking that she craves attention, even her friends are puzzled as to why she has reached for THIS kind of attention. Tonight we got our answer. Michael Nelson, John Patrick and Roger Cochetti as IBMs lobbyist for the Global internet project have led passing of the tin cup in the support of ICANN. Now Esther begins to collect her prize from IBM in return for the flak that she puts up with. Not content to be the guru of industry insiders, she embarked tonight on a broader path of publicity an instant recognition for her personna courtesy of IBM. Yep she's the star of an IBM e-commerce commercial. Esther as chess playing athlete brought to you by IBM e-commerce solutions. So there's the grand tie in as Esther draws the corporate nooses around our necks and she is beamed into 50 million homes as part of the NBA playoffs. E-commerce? Think IBM, think Dyson. Since this must be a brainy subject, instead of leaping seven benches in a row like OJ, she plays chess and her aura is inflated by her IBM/ICANN alliance into making her a TV icon and subliminally associated in the mind of the couch potato as our information technology queen. It figures. An old friend saw it coming more quickly than I and wrote to me: Aww, c'mon Gordon. Are you really surprised that Esther Dyson, a mainframe geek who was 10 years too late with her opinions on relational databases and 15 years too late on the Internet has only her corporate interests in mind? I mean, it is a surprise that anyone who knows anything about what is driving the modern economy pays any attention to her, at all! To my mind her opinions are about as valuable as Linus Pauling's opinions on vitamin C (and about as supportable). Still, I suppose that there will always be a few souls who are so like sheep as to be asking for the name of the Emperor's tailor. ================================================= The elevation of Esther and the destruction of internet freedom <sigh>! Where's Congressman Pickering when we need him? ******************************************************************** The COOK Report on Internet | New handbook just published:IP Insur- 431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618 USA| gency & Transformation of Telecomm.See (609) 882-2572 (phone & fax) | http://cookreport.com/insurgency.html [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Index to 7 years of COOK Report, how to subscribe, exec summaries, special reports, gloss at http://www.cookreport.com ********************************************************************
