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Honestly, I don't blame him. We have a GOP-controlled Congress, so testifying would just be an hours-long exercise in getting yelled at by old people who don't understand technology or believe in science, but love an opportunity for political grandstanding against an Obama-appointee.

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Transparency shouldn't be dictated based on which party controls congress.

Not to mention it's not just the GOP that's full of old people that have zero technology grasp.

Your comment would have been better, in my view, without the ad-hominem attack on older people. Especially if you wish to advocate for a pro-science, reason and evidence approach to argumentation.

As a relatively old person, at least for HN, I don't believe it's ad hominem to suggest that old people don't understand new things as well as younger people do. And it's clearly an issue for the Internet. Note, for example, the strong correlation between age and internet use here:

http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-age-literature/#many

There's also the term "digital native": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_native

There's always a difference between the technologies you grew up around and the ones that have emerged after you became an adult. For me it feels similar to my native language and the ones I've picked up later.

> As a relatively old person, at least for HN, I don't believe it's ad hominem to suggest that old people don't understand new things as well as younger people do.

As a pretty-young curmudgeon, I will say that young people often throw out "he's old and doesn't understand the internet" when they really mean "he's old and doesn't share our values re: the internet." "Neutrality" is a value you subscribe to, not a technology to be understood.

"As a relatively old person, at least for HN, I don't believe it's ad hominem to suggest that old people don't understand new things as well as younger people do. "

My issue is that many young people think that new things are completely different..when in reality, it's just better/different packaging and marketing on an old idea.

He wasn't attacking old people per se, but describing a group. The mean age of Congress is 57 across the board, but the mean age of the Republicans in control of Congress is 63.8.

It's probably a fair assessment to say that most people of that age are going to be on the back side of the bell curve in understanding issues of technology, and it's fairly verifiable through their words and actions that the Republicans in Congress are the most vehemently anti-science, perhaps in our history.

This is a poor excuse for a lack of transparency and is unacceptable.

Congressional testimony is not the same thing as transparency. In my experience, it's just the opposite.

This. There was widespread belief that Wheeler was a cable industry stooge. Wheeler and Obama deserve some credit for making this happen in an obstructionist environment.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/obamas-bad-pick-a...

Intel, Cisco, and IBM are on the Republicans' side on this issue. Do they not know technology?

Ahh, they're big, so they must know better than us. You're not actually making any salient points, other than appealing to authority and big bank accounts (sounds a little like the Republicans). In fact you haven't made a salient point anti NN in this entire thread other than to complain about people questioning people's motives.

And then there's this. I'm not sure what it's meant to mean.

Although, I have seen the cost of some Cisco networking devices. I know exactly what they stand to gain from a tiered Internet (Hint: Billions in sales to telcos looking to shape their traffic based on contracts).

I would assume they want to sell expensive traffic-shaping routers and networking gear to telecoms.

They would be better served long-term by overall growth in internet traffic. But large corporations beholden to the stock market don't want to have to explain to Wall Street that earnings are going to tank next quarter after some of their most lucrative customers went elsewhere in retaliation for their political stance.

Ars has been playing on the 'Republicans are against it so it must be good' emotion card for awhile now. That's almost all I see on this issue in the tech media. What's been happening is that all objections are being dismissed as "Republicans lol" and "Fox News reporting so must be wrong". Our national discussion is literally at the level of Jon Stewart's mockery of things that warrant serious discussion.

When was the last time you heard a Republican politician on the national stage raise an issue that was not obviously directed at their base, or donors?

A comment that plainly stated a fact in a noninflammatory way?

Or proposed a course of action that was not designed to be punitive to some group, or alternately, designed to disproportionately benefit the powerful?

Republicans inhabit a carefully-crafted parallel reality that is at the breaking point of divergence from American and global first-world society.

Personally, I'll take them seriously when they change their methods and rhetoric, which is probably never.

Their current attitude and language indicates they are not interested in either my vote, or my problems.

> When was the last time you heard a Republican politician on the national stage raise an issue that was not obviously directed at their base, or donors?

Do you seriously believe that it's only Republicans that pander to their base?

It's certainly not only Republicans. But neither are they pandering to their "base" in any traditional sense; rather, they are pandering to a few dozen specific people, the extreme concentration of whose wealth generates gravitational fields that that propagate through today's medium more freely than in any time in recent memory.

To be fair, Republicans are way better at pandering to their base. Democrats tend to flake out and betray their base at the drop of a hat.

> When was the last time you heard a Republican politician on the national stage raise an issue that was not obviously directed at their base, or donors?

What would you expect a politician to do—raise an issue his supporters don't care about? That doesn't even begin to make sense.

All of your points apply to every politician, and to every talking head.

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