>>And regardless of your political inclinations, I highly recommend Brinkley. It's an impressively researched/written and enlightening chronicle of the politics and egos in the public perpetration of this industry scam - and the collateral technology battles (sorry for the dustjacket)
It's Brinkley's political inclinations that are suspect. Early on there were indeed Dems arguing that we had to catch up with the Japanese in analog HDTV. They included, I believe, Gary Hartpence and AlGore. The other side, including George Gilder as I recall, argued such action was not only unnecessary, but wasteful, since digital HDTV would quickly render the Japanese folly - analog HDTV - obsolete.
The larger war was, of course, over the free market approach vs. national industrial policy - the latter something many Dems have long sought, even as it failed spectacularly throughout the world. I have little doubt that since the side of Brinkley's manifest political inclinations lost that HDTV battle, he used his book to detail how messy and unfree the "free" market approach was.
It is undeniable that politics intruded and process was messy, but only because people like Brinkley had already given government that leverage over television. The "solution" advocated by his side, a national industrial policy, would only secure and deepen that political leverage into other areas. With that leverage could only come greater exactions and more centralized power, which is what government is all about for that crowd. |
