Conscious radio and the end of spectrum scarcity

David "Reed's Law" Reed's presentation to the FCC's Techical Advisory Council on Software-Defined "Conscious" Radio is an eye-opener. Software-Defined Radio is radio that uses software, not circuits, to tune and demodulate. The "conscious" part comes from a continuous monitoring of the local airwaves and an adaptive negotiation by all radios in the grid to avoid each others' signal. The upshot is a world where spectrum, the most scarce and valuable of public resources, is free and nonscarce (and where, incidentally, the FCC has no a severely reduced (Thanks, Seth!) raison d'etre). Check out the PowerPoint (I understand that there's a RealAudio clip of the commentary somewhere on the FCC site, but I can't find it — can you? see above))

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(Thanks, DeWayne!)