Given the troubles that I've had connecting while at this conference, it's ironic that, once I did get connected this morning (thanks to A Fine Grind at Marshall and Cleveland in St. Paul), I read an NYT article that pointed to this article in Foreign Affairs.

Author Thomas Bleha says that since the beginning of the Bush administration, the U.S. has fallen far behind Japan and other Asian states in deploying broadband -- "In the first three years of the Bush administration, the United States dropped from 4th to 13th place in global rankings of broadband Internet usage." According to Bleha, this means the U.S. is losing its place as a leader in Internet innovation. Says he: "The [Asian] countries, rather than the United States, will benefit from the enhanced productivity, economic growth, and new jobs that high-speed broadband will bring."

You could also argue its place as a leader of innovation, period. This may take a little longer to play out, but if you buy the idea that broadband Internet is the track on which the innovation train now runs, it's inevitable.

Bleha, again -- "Asians will have the first crack at developing the new commercial applications, products, services, and content of the high-speed-broadband era. Although many large U.S. firms, such as Cisco, IBM, and Microsoft, are closely following developments overseas and are unlikely to be left behind, the United States' medium-sized and smaller firms, which tend to foster the most innovation, may well be."