The question we were left with two weeks ago was “Why has America lost its broadband leadership?” but it really ought to have been “Whatever happened to the Information Superhighway?” It died. … There are many reasons for [America’s decline], but much of it comes down to government policy or lack of it and some of it comes down to pure luck. In large part we’ve been locked in our own little world where government and business feed on each other in ways that are always symbiotic and often destructive, but this time the rest of the world just passed us by while we were distracted by other things.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070803_002641.html