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KGNU's Claudia Cragg talks here with former Microsoft executive, the brains behind the 'Room To Read' organization which, he says, all started with a case of job burnout. John Wood escaped to Nepal for a much-needed backpacking getaway and while hiking in the Himalayas, met a Nepalese “Education Resource Officer” who invited him to visit a school in a neighboring village. Little did John know that this short detour would change his life forever. At the school, John saw the harsh reality confronting not only this village, but millions of Nepalese children–a dilapidated schoolroom and a severe shortage of books. John was stunned to discover that the few books this school had had–a Danielle Steele romance, the Lonely Planet Guide to Mongolia, and a few other backpacker castoffs–were so precious that they were kept under lock and key...to protect them from the children.

As John left the village, the headmaster made a simple request: "Perhaps, Sir, you will someday come back with books." His request would not go unheard. John emailed friends asking for help collecting children's books, and within two months had collected over 3,000 books. The following year, John and his father, accompanied by a train of eight book-bearing donkeys, returned to the village in Nepal. Seeing the faces of the children with the books convinced John to leave the corporate world and devote himself to becoming the Andrew Carnegie of the developing world. In late 1999, John quit his executive position with Microsoft and started Room to Read. Beginning in Nepal, John and his Nepali co-founder, Dinesh Shrestha, started by working with rural communities to build schools (School Room) and to establish libraries (Reading Room). 

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KGNU’s Claudia Cragg talks with Blair Levin about the new book he has co-authored ‘The Politics of Abundance - How Technology Can Fix the Budget, Revive the American Dream, and Establish Obama’s Legacy’

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EXCERPT - “Some will tell the President that the government should never have a growth strategy beyond being fiscally prudent and letting markets allocate capital. But a government that can land a thinking machine on Mars surely can develop an informed opinion about what sectors of the economy can grow rapidly and contribute to a high and rising standard of living for everyone. In any event, currently the knowledge and power markets cannot readily allocate capital appropriately because they are constricted by a web of law, externalities, and monopoly bottlenecks. Moreover, the government plays such a large role as a spender and regulator in these markets, that its conduct, whether or not coherently focused, enormously affects industry trends. Finally, if the United States economy does not rebuild the knowledge and power platform far faster, better, and cheaper than market forces are now doing, then Americans will suffer from inadequate educations, poor and expensive healthcare, and devastating climate change, for generations to come.

However, those who remain unconvinced of the merits of a growth strategy, and prefer single-minded focus on the debt-to-GDP ratio, should be mollified by the fact that our legislative proposals for the two platforms reduce the deficit by about $100 billion, without accounting for the additional tax revenues that will be derived from more rapid economic growth. In Chapter 4, we suggest ways to negotiate for these measures as part of avoiding the “fiscal cliff.” Taken as a whole, our proposals outline the politics of abundance.” -Reed Hundt and Blair Levin

Levin oversaw the creation of the National Broadband Plan as the executive director of the Omnibus Broadband Initiative at the Federal Communications Commission in 2009 and 2010. He is now a fellow at the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program and the executive director of Gig.U, a coalition of research university communities working to accelerate the deployment of next-generation networks in the United States.

The book’s co-author Reed Hundt is the CEO of the Coalition for Green Capital, a non-profit. He was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 1993 to 1997, and he was on Barack Obama’s Presidential transition team.

He sits on the boards of directors of Intel Corporation, ASSIA, a communications software firm, and Kno Inc., the education software company. He also serves on boards or as an advisor at the United Negro College Fund; the Clean Energy Finance and Investment Authority of Connecticut; the Advanced Energy Economy Institute; Yale School of Management; Peek, Inc., a mobile technology company; and Mytonomy, a social network for college planning.

Hundt has written many articles and two books: In China’s Shadow: The Crisis of American Entrepreneurship (Yale University Press, 2006) and You Say You Want A Revolution: A Story of Information Age Politics (Yale University Press, 2000). He graduated from Yale College, and Yale Law School.

Surveys (this is just one) show that many today feel they are drowning in too much information, but find it’s often too much of the kind they DO NOT want and rarely approaches what they might be looking for.

With nifty Power Searching techniques, anyone can ‘drill down’ to unearth hidden facts, documents, file types in a variety of locations and languages. This a skill that is only becoming more important each day.

This information, together with the Blair Levin interview (‘The Politics of Abundance) made up a one hour programme for KGNU’s ‘It’s The Economy’ on The FCC and The Economics of The Internet and Connectivity.

Hear you will hear an excerpt (with kind permission) of a recent seminar at Newsplex Asia (at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University) in conjunction with Google, covering topics from the hot and newly-emerging field of data journalism and visualization to making the most of Google Tools to generate news stories. Speakers took part through Google+ Hangouts to share their experiences on how free online tools, such as Fusion Tables, can be used to gather and display data to readers in disasters such as the Fukushima-Daichi disaster after the Japanese quake and tsunami last year. In the full-length version, YouTube experts also convey how news organisations can make the most out of the video-sharing platform.

Sign up for Power Searching with Google course.

Dan Russell's home page and site.

YouTube video of Robin Moroney's and Anthony Baxter's (for reasons of length NOT incl. in this podcast) http://youtu.be/f4hIOsahz2A