In a city where joyful excess is standard, the mood today is somber. Everyone expects America will be at war in a day or two, and that tends to put parochial concerns in their place.
I’m at the CTIA Wireless 2003 show in New Orleans, where the keynote session promised to be interesting, as it featured (among others) FCC Chairman Michael Powell. It wasn’t interesting. Powell had nothing new to say.
The show floor, on the other hand, is a preview of how wireless communications will look in a couple of years. It’s amusing to see all the breathless talk of mobile messaging and camera-equipped phones, which are yesterday’s news in places like Japan and Finland. The U.S. is far, far behind the rest of the world. Better late than never, of course.