trying to make that real for people so that we care about it is a tall order. >> when did you get the idea of doubling to the factory in china? >> when i started studying the >> when i started studying the best. when i started to figure out devices are made. for a company that almost has no public awareness, they make almost 15% of our electronics. so many companies that you think of like dell and nokia. they subcontract the work out to foxconn. it is one company making it the same things. they are marketed differently. they are made next to each other by thousands of people. i read about the reports that are available on the web of the conditions. they are an especially brutal company. it became clear that i was not able to figure out what was

going on and allied sought it for myself. foxconn is an especially brutal company. >> when did you go there? >> in may and june of last year, 2010. >> how did you go there? >> i flew into hong kong. and i have a chinese visa. i crossed the border. it is only about a 40-minute drive north of hong kong. that is the city where almost all of our devices are made in the world. shenzhen is a city of 14 million people. it is almost 40 minutes north of hong kong. almost nobody in america has

heard the name of the city. even though, almost everything electronic comes from that place. there is an enormous disconnect. i had no idea. >> how did you get there from hong kong? >> i got there two different ways. i took a bus up once. i had to shuttle back and forth to do other projects in hong kong and meet with activist groups. you can take the subway. it goes underground in the station there is a for your passport. you get in the hong kong subway system. it is amazing to go there where almost all of our things are made, where any american journalist could fly to hong kong with a chinese visa and go to the doors of the factories and ask the conditions under which they are made.

yet that story has not been told. >> did you go with anybody? >> i went with my wife and director. they acted as backup. it was not clear what was going to happen when i did this. not to be dramatic about it, but she would stay behind at the hotel. she was like, i will check in at this time. if i do not, start calling people and start making noise. i found a translator through friends of friends and i went with the translator because i do not speak mandarin. >> what did they think you were going to do? >> i did not have to say what i was going to do. i had to say what my profession was. i said teacher, which is true. i do teach, as well. >> did you contact foxconn and did they let you in the factory? >> i did not.

>> why not? >> it was clear that would not lead anywhere. it would lead to them having a picture of me, and that would cause more problems when i got to the factory. i work with the fixer who had worked with the bbc to try to get connections to other factories within the special economic zone to do something officially about the board. that was hopeless. it was clear that was not going to work at all. if i followed the rules of engagement, the rules of engagement for journalism in china is very clear. nobody is cleared to talk to you about anything. you are just going to tell a terrible story about the things that they know are wrong. they are not going to let anybody in. they are very clear about not letting anybody in.

your organization will require you to get a journalism visa. at this point, the chinese government will track you very closely the whole time you are there. >> here is a clip about you talking about china in your monologue. >> we get our stuff from china. in a generalized way, "china." there are dragons there. [laughter] >> explain the china thing. you do that a lot when you talk about china. what are you getting at? >> this is just a stylized gesture to capture something that we all know is true, which is that we are terrified of and fetishized by china.

we do not want to think about the implications of china. we are terrified that they are larger than us. we are terrified of the economic relationship we are in. it is scary, and we do not like to think about it. at the same time we fetishize china. so many business books say that china is the great new market. this is the wild west. i spoke to so many businessmen who make a living going back and forth between hong kong and mainland china. making their fortunes there. they are talking about it feels like the wild west. fortunes can be won. what is not talked about is it is a fact that it is a fascist country run by thugs. >> it is true. it is a taiwanese company in mainland china. >> yes. that is the part of the

relationship between the taiwanese and the mainland chinese. it is not good. the fact that the company is from taiwan makes it easier to treat the workers as subhuman. i think it makes it easier for them. >> do you use apple products yourself? >> i do. one of the reasons i did the show is that i have been an apple user my entire life. they defined my entire life with technology. i love apple products. >> you went to this place? >> 430,000. >> how many buildings are there? >> i do not know. they stretched to the horizon. when you try to drive around the factory, it like is trying to circumnavigate the city. it is huge.

>> what did you do once you got there? >> i did the thing that i told all of these journalists that i was going to do. they really were clear that this is the stupidest thing that they have ever heard. i went to the main gate and i stood there with my translator. i just talked to anybody who wanted to talk to me when they came out of the gates. the workers. >> how many did you talk to? >> hundreds. >> how long were you there? >> i was there for hours and hours and hours. i went back multiple times. each time i spoke to hundreds of workers. >> how did you capture what they said? did you write it down, record it? >> no. with my hearing and my mind. >> what did you begin to hear

from them? >> well, you know, it is really fascinating, the patterns. we talked a lot about the things that you expect. where in china they came from, what they do in the factory. i heard a lot about the minutia of what it is like in the factory. then stories come out about people. i was very struck. this was a surprise to me. i did not know how things worked on the ground. it seemed like a very innocuous question, which was -- if you could change anything, what would you change? people would react as though a bee had flown into his face. they would speak to my translator. he says that he never thought about that before. that would happen every time i asked that question. that was a very illuminating moment. you are dealing with a very different landscape. you are dealing with a country that has a fascist government

that locks down its people. they are locked down in terms of their freedoms and what they are allowed to think. then you are imposing corporatism, has been invited in and given free rein to control the landscape. they are given very pliable workers. you wonder, how could they be given such terrible work conditions? we are working hand-in-hand with the government of china so that they do not ask these questions. when they opened up a special economic zone -- we are not only exporting our jobs, but the values. i am talking about a work week that has limits. i am talking about people having appropriate breaks so that they do not actually die on the production line. we chose not to do that. our corporations chose not to.

>> in your monologue, you talk about suicides. i got on the web -- it did not tell us how many there were, but they are all around 20 years old. >> the workers are very young. they fight hard to get these jobs. they are some of the best jobs in china. people will struggle to get out of their villages to come to this economic honeypot we have created in the south of the country. they all get degrees in electrical engineering. and then they make our stuff.

trouble comes from people with too much time on their hands so it's very much clear to me that the corporations worked hand in hand with the chinese government. it's like a computer soaking up all the people who might otherwise cause trouble and give them a place to be. they send back to people in their village. they are simply work hard enough that they don't have time to think about these things. >> how many suicides in 2010? >> i believe 13 or 14. it's a little blurry. the number shift according to what article you read. what is interesting is that the number of suicides in 2010 were not that much different than 2009 or 2008. it goes back to when people started reporting on it in 2005. in 2010, there happen to be a cluster of them.

the associated press ran a single story that people were climbing up the roofs and throwing themselves off week after week at their workplace. because of one article, a certain degree of western press rose up about these issues. they did not go very deeply. they just looked at the fact that there were suicides. why are there suicides? we are going to pay them more. that pay raise never materialized. they promised to pay them 30% more. which i always think is fascinating because if any employer can afford to raise the salaries of all of their employees 30% overnight, that sounds like something where you might have been underpaying people. >> how much are they paying them? >> i believe the median salary when i arrived was something

like $114 a month, which does not sound like very much to us. the thrust of my investigations and of the piece that i created is not concerned with the amount they are paid. that is a good wage in that area of china in terms of what you need commesurate with what your expenses are. what they need is not more money. they need humane working conditions. they need that recognition that they are human beings. that is more important than their wages being increased. that's simple respect that workers should have that make craftsmen that can make things so that they can have a life. >> does steve jobs know this? has he seen your monologue? >> i think he knows. >> when you go to the theater, you give the people the e-mail address. >> i do.

steve jobs has a long-running policy that he responds to email sometimes. so, yes, i give his e-mail address. i tell people to write to him about their experiences in the theater. and if they have questions, ask apple to be open to them. he has responded to a large number of people who have written to him about this. a number of people have forwarded his responses to me. his principal response is, well, basically it is, i do not think mike appreciates the complexities of the situation. i think it is a fine response. it recognizes to some degree

there is a situation. somebody from apple wanted to talk about the complexities of 12 year-old putting together a electronics, i would be happy to listen to that conversation. >> there is a list of companies that you list, foxconn, amazon, apple, samsung, sony, acer, why did you not give up your apple stuff if it bothers you so much? >> if i give it up -- there are no humane electronics today. there are none. the electronics not made by foxconn are still produced in the special economic zone by other factories in conditions that are the same or worse. if i get rid of my electronics, i would have to buy more electronics and perpetuate the problem. also, that's the heart of what this monologue is trying to

address, that these devices have become a part of our consciousness itself. they change the way we relate to the world. i cannot just opt out of my culture. you can live with honor. you could live on the side of a mountain eating my yam paste. but i cannot live that way. i would have no impact on the culture. i believe in communicating with people. i need my tools to do it. it is very complex. >> where did you grow up in the united states? >> i grew up in maine on the canadian border. it is the end of the u.s. route 1. it owns in maine. there is a sign, and the road ends. >> what did your parents do? >> my mother was a meat packer. my father works for the veterans administration counseling, in

those days, vietnam veterans. today, he is busy counseling veterans from our many wars. >> he is still active? >> he is planning on retiring. there is so much work that he thinks there is no way he can retire. >> how long did you live there? >> i lived in fort kent until i was 13 or 14. then we moved down to central maine, which is still very remote. compared to northern maine, it is a tropical vacation. >> when did you first perform? >> my first performance was when i was 6 or 7. i gave an astronomy demonstration. i had a shoe box with a light on the one end. i would shine the light. i bring it up because it was actually a production.

i would charge people tickets and make them sit in the room. i would hold forth like some sort of miniature barnum. after that i started doing theater in high school. it was also in conjunction with speech and debate. i was a very avid speech and debate person. i think that's informed all my work. >> what year did you start the speech and debate? >> i was a sophomore in high school. did you debate? >> oh, yes. >> did you compete? >> yes. i did well. i went to nationals twice. >> what drew you into that? >> i think the love of the extemporaneous. in a real debate, there are vectors and factors that cannot be known, that assert themselves on the fly. i like thinking on my feet. i said when i was a young man, i would drink a lot of bourbon. sometimes when i was drinking

bourbon, i would rail against the tyranny of the written word. you know, "the written word!" i really do believe that we conflate the process of writing with thinking. you don't need to write to think. thinking happens in our minds of if you are thinking, you are not thinking in sentences. there is a different thing going on. i love the way in debate, it is oral. i love the way the thought hovers in the mind and is expressed. and then things are grappled in the air. and everyone is participating. i love that. >> where did you go to college? >> colby college. it was in maine. i got a scholarship that allowed me to go. from maine.

i was very much the guy from maine. everybody else is from outside of maine. >> was it grades that got you in there? was it your sats or your performance? >> my grades were good, but not exceptional. i think it was my essays. i think my essay played a lot in getting me in. i don't know. i am glad they let me in. i really am. >> you wrote a monologue on gold. i talked about gold. >> this is probably black cargo gold. >> how many monologues have you done in your professional career? >> 16. >> and that was just a couple of years ago. >> yes. >> and what was it about? >> about two things. it is about my trip to an island in the south pacific or the

people worshiped the objects of america. they have a celebration one day a year where they are at the base of an erupting volcano and they tell the history of america in dance, theater, and song. >> is this fiction? >> no. it is in thomas. it's about the people, and they have a lack of an economic system. on this island, a lot of people do not use money or believe in currency. this is how their worship works. it is paired with a story of the international financial collapse. >> here's a little bit from that. >> you can march right down to the treasury and you march in there. you walked in and say, ahh! i demand my gold. ahh! they say, oh, my god, another libertarian.

hold on. [laughing] and they wait. [laughter] put out your hand. there you go. [laughter] get out of here. get out of here. ahhh! ron paul in 2012. >> what year was that done? >> i think that was in 2009. >> how long did you perform this? >> a year. they are rotating. so i lasted that monologue in january of this year. >> you use language there, you use a lot of language in all of your performances and especially the one that i saw. >> if i do not speak in english, we are going to have a problem. i love the conflation of adult language.

>> yeah, the four-letter word. >> i use it because it expresses the full range of the words that are available to me. i do not actually have naturally limited vectors that caused me not to use certain parts of my speech. fundamentally, i am not a puritan. so i use all of my language. >> the reason i bring it up is because you had a strange experience in the middle of one of your monologues one time where people got up and left. where was this? >> this was at cambridge. >> in massachusetts? >> yes, in 2007. >> what were the circumstances? >> well, apparently, a christian group came and saw the show and did not choose to be aware. they were like a school group. although they had been informed

that there was adult language and adult situations, they did not heed that warning. so the teachers decided to panic after i began speaking. so they left en masse. as they left, one of the adult chaperons decided to destroy the outline. i use the outlines during the show. they are sort of irreplaceable because i make them by hand. he poured water on them. >> i am going to show a clip in just a little bit. watching you in this clip, at first you think this is part of the show. >> well -- >> you look. >> i was very surprised. it is surprising when a theater of 350 people, to have 80 or 90

people all rise and flood the stage is a surprising thing. >> are you sure that they did not plan this in a advance? >> i am pretty sure. i got in touch with them afterwards. i spoke with the person who destroyed my outline. >> the person we see pouring water on your script. >> yes. >> let's watch. >> and that is new york. [laughing] >> that's crazy. >> they're doing it because of the language. you want to do with this? >> well, i don't know.

>> do any of the people that are leaving want to stay and talk about this or do you wan to run out like cowards? >> that is a long nine-minute piece of video that is on youtube if you want to see the whole thing. you talk more about it. what happened to you physically? what was your personal reaction? >> it was really painful. it is hard to express to people -- i think a lot of people would understand. to be open onstage and to be open telling a story, when they are not scripted and you are telling the story every night, is open. it is really painful to have people literally destroy your work. it is painful. that is one of the reasons i had to track them down.

it always galls me that i had to track them down. in the clip, the whole thing that's online, at the end of it i restart the show. one of the reasons i restart the show is because i thought, well, it's a school group. this was completely crazy. of course, one of the parents, not the person who did this stupid thing, but one of the other ones has left a note in the boxoffice saying, we are sorry. we will have to talk about this. there was no note. i could not believe it. i can be so naive. i really thought, of course you could not just do this and leave. but they did. the group wanted a refund. they did not want to contact me. i had to track them down. >> how long had they stayed? >> 15 minutes. >> they were reacting

specifically to the four-letter words? >> if they stayed longer, they would have been upset about the political things as well, i suspect. >> what happened to the person that poured the water? >> well, it was interesting. >> and where was he from? >> he was from a small town in california. that is where the whole group was from. they were in the boston area for a coral competition. this is what they chose to take their students to that night that they did not research very well. when i talked to him, he was apologetic. he admitted that he had anger management issues that he was working on. i appreciated that. he talked about how his feeling was that -- he had children, he had two daughters at that time, 12 and 16.

he was terrified. i remember this so vividly. he was saying he was terrified about the future. he was terrified about the world they were going to be in. it was fascinating. their actions, the fact that he felt this way, i felt terrified, too. like i could actually empathize with that feeling. i just don't know that i would agree with the way he is addressing it. or if the same things would terrify both of us. >> you sent this to him or you wrote it on your blog. i was raised catholic. he changed his demeanor on the telephone when you said that. what was the change? >> it really upset me at the time. i remember that. what happened was that he saw me differently. i said that and that was a code

word for the fact that i was christian. so as soon as i was a member of his sort of extended religion, he began to talk to me in a much more open way. it really upset me. because i could feel how i hadn't actually got his respect before. as soon as i said this thing, it was like now we can speak as equals. that really got me, the fact after all this happened -- we are talking, so he can apologize. we still cannot have an honest conversation unless we happened to worship the same god. >> then you did tell him that you were a liberal atheist. what was his reaction to that? >> he did not have much of a reaction at all.

>> it comes through that you are part journalist, part activist. are you political? >> of course. >> how would you define your political beliefs? >> i do not know. my political beliefs are defined by the age i live in. if you look at the part of my work over the last five, 10 years -- i believe that our age is an age of moving between an age of nations into an age of corporations. most of my work is about the alignment of that transition. in another age, it would be fruitful to say that i believed in socialism. no, i believe more in capitalism. but i feel like that debate has ended for my age and my time. the debate is instead about the corporations and their rise, which seems and exorable and the

amount of power is staggering. my work is in relation to that. my political work is, what does it mean that we created these entities and gave them the rights of individuals? of men? they loom above us and are multinational and are not changed to any one country and cannot be held to account. in many ways, we work under them. that forms the core of my belief system, that this is actually a war going on right now, being fought over what it will mean to be a human being in a world where corporations are getting this powerful and getting more powerful. >> other than in 2007, do you ever find yourself in the corporate world or any world politically as when you do your monologues? >> i do sometimes. >> do they get in your face? >> sometimes.

>> when? is it in the middle of the show? >> not in the middle of the show often. you are trying to create this artistic construct. that confrontation is dramatic. we loved it when the theater breaks in the middle. something is happening that is not unexpected. you cannot achieve catharsis if you are being interrupted. what i do to create a middle ground is i go to the lobby after every show. because the issues of the shows are so charged and political, i feel like it is my obligation -- when i'm on stage, it is a bit like greek theater. you wear a mask and you are representing things. i have this power. then i owe it to people to take off the mask, even though i am just playing myself, and go to the lobby, so we can talk to one another as human beings.

generally when there are confrontations, that happened there. or people send me anonymous e-mails. >> have you had conversations with politician since you have been here? >> a few. politicians i believe are functionaries of the sub functionaries. but never an elected official. i did have an elected official that said "if you see something, say something." that was about the rise of homeland security and the military industrial complex. i had people who have interest with defense contractors, really upset about the implication that their industry actually exists to create an american empire. >> so often in washington, some of these theaters are underwritten by major corporations.

have you ever had a kickback on that or not being allowed to appear somewhere because the underwriter did not want you there? >> it is interesting. it is true that they are underwritten. generally -- i am really proud about this, about the american theater. there is a lot that is wrong with the american theater. most of the places that i have worked have worked hard to make sure that there is some degree of separation between their working and their underwriting. where i have experienced pushed back is when i did a monologue about the american theater about how theater failed america. sometimes you say things and they hit you where you eat. there were a number of theaters that found it a little bit too close to the bone when they talk about feelings close to the theater, so i will not be working with them anymore.

>> let's go to another monologue. it will connect your father in present day and some of what you alluded to earlier. let's i watch this and you can tell us where it came from. >> all that he wants to talk about is iraq. he is afraid that we are going to go to war in iraq. he works as a therapist for the veterans administration. he knows that when the government is done with those kids, he is going to see them. he's going to see them next. he is really, really worried about that. it is funny. as a kid growing up in maine, my friends, their fathers sometimes lose their jobs at the mills. every time that happened, the family went to shit. i worried what would happen if my father lost his job. all of the veterans are vietnam veterans. they are all getting older. so i got worried.

what happens if my father runs out of veterans. i actually asked him once, what is going to happen if you run out of veterans? i will never forget. he laughed and said, oh, michael, that's never going to happen. >> where is that from? >> that is from a monologue called "invincible summer" which is about, in part, the history of the new york subway system. then it is about my neighborhood in brooklyn before and after 9/11. it is about the changes in my life, in my family's life, and

in my country in the years that followed 9/11. >> where were you on 9/11? >> i was in lower manhattan. >> what impact did that have on you? >> it had a huge impact on me. i was one of the people that walked out of the city over the bridge, and it felt like the world was ending. it had a very deep impact on me. one of the things that changed in me, i have always been a bit of a iconoclast in terms of my political beliefs. in the years following 9/11, i found myseld -- i think i did not reckon with the amount of rage i felt about that attack. i was very angry. i was isolated. my wife was in seattle when it happened. when it opened up, there was a gulf between us because she was not here. she would never fully understand. i should have resolved those

feelings. i think i nurtured them a little bit. sometimes it is hard to let go of anger. there is a comfort to it. a lot of the monologues are the fact that i supported the iraq war. i found myself persuaded by the arguments that many people were persuaded by at the time. the monologue reckons with the fallout of that. how especially as an artist, in the arts community to a myth that you supported the iraq war and to speak in a candid, open way about why you gave your support and how you withdrew your support, because today, no one will admit that they supported that war in any way. there is an incredible silence. i remember there were other people that i had conversations with.

each step along the path seemed reasonable. it is important for us to remember that. the past is not people acting in an insane matter. everything seems reasonable when you're walking down that road. >> moving to central maine, going to colby, i saw somewhere where colby had a big impact on you. >> yes. a huge impact. >> how big is colby college? >> it is small, maybe 700 students. >> located where? >> it is in central maine. it could have been on another planet. was defined by growing up in maine. but it was only in colby that i was put in contact with the power structures of our culture. i did not understand what wealth

was until i went there. i understand that there are people in the world with a lot more money. i had not spent a lot of time around them. the spectrum in my small town, i knew people that have less money and people who had more money. but not in the quantum way. i did not understand what it meant to be living in new york city. i think about my life today. i could not have conceived this life growing up in my small town. colby was this place where i encounter these ideas for the first time. i learned to grapple with things. what is the point of this life if these things are possible? is it the point of my life to find a job where i can make enough money to make these things real for me? or is my calling to find a calling and do something real

for me? >> before we run out of time, are you really going to do a 24-hour monologue? >> i am. >> where? >> it will happen twice. it will happen once on the west coast in portland, oregon, in september and then it will happen once on the east coast in new york city. >> what are you going to talk about? >> everything. it is called "all the hours in the day." the show is about a huge number of topics. it is an earnest attempt to create a gigantic story that compels people's interest. the goal is to make it compelling enough that people will stay longer than they ever thought that they would. it is an attempt to create a working definition of the american national character and having a strong streak of puritanism running through the heart of it.

on the strong side, it gives us our work ethic. on the negative side, it gives us repression. encoiled around that is a streak of anarchism. it is an attempt to reconcile things and create a chart of what it means to be american over this immensely huge story. it is 12, 13 or 14 stories that weave back and forth that tell this gigantic mosaic. >> any little breaks? >> there will be little breaks here and there. they are more for the audience than me. people are going to need to eat. we will provide food in different ways. it is one gigantic experience with this really, possibly crazy, but earnest attempt to say that if you want, you can come in at the beginning and stay all the way through. we will take care of you. >> what will it cost?

>> i don't know yet. i am hoping it will cost less than what you expect. >> how big will the theater be? >> we are working on that. we are looking at 600, 700 seats. >> here is a clip where you are talking about cheese. >> oh, yeah of. >> let's see. >> they rip off their clothes and they run to the cast party. at the cast party, there is the cheese. all these platters of cheese. the white cheese, the yellow cheese, the mozzarella, this is what they are paid in. [laughter] [applause] they are lining their pockets. it's enough to last for five

weeks. they grab bottles of wine. then they take off. they bring it to the dormitory where they're staying. there they are in the darkness, eating their cheese. [laughing] this is so worth life in the arts. [laughing] worth not having children. >> is this a part of what made the people in the theater mad? >> yup. yup. because it's true. in the american theater, it is less glamorous than talking about the labor conditions in china. it is all the way in china. i work in the theater. the truth is that actors in the american theater are paid

very low. they are paid low wages. >> we take it back to steve jobs and apple. did any journalists hear what you say about foxconn. have there been any articles written about this? >> yeah. i agitated with "wired" magazine about this. they did a cover story about the suicides. it was a pathetic story. they sent people over with the p.r. firm and were dotted around. they did not talk to a single worker. it was a puff piece. so, so far no one has gone over and sourced the journalism.

>> of all of the people you talked to outside of the gates, who did you remember the most? >> there was one girl. >> talked about her in the show. there was one girl who was explaining to me how she cleans the screens of iphones by hand. i showed her mine. i handed it to her. i have a picture of her holding my iphone. i said that you might have clean this iphone. we will never know. incredibly quickly, as soon as i said that, she rubbed it on her pants and said, i have cleaned it a second time. i was talking to her and she was so delightful. i said, how old are you? she said, i am 13. >> said, oh. >> if somebody wants to get a hold of all of your work, what is the website? >> it is my name. it is mikedaisey.com. >> find the blog and the whole

thing. >> yup. >> we're out of time, mike daisey. thank you very much. >> thanks for having me. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> for a d.v.d. copy, call -- for free transcripts, visit us us -- >> today the commission on wartime contracting is holding a hearing on how u.s. tax dollars spent on contracting in iraq and afghanistan. witnesses will include the special specters general for re-- inspectors general, the

department of defense inspector general, and a former chairman on army acquisition reform. we'll have that live at 9:30 a.m. eastern on c-span2 c-span. >> today on c-span, a discussion on same-sex marriage in america. you'll hear from chad griffin, its political consultant who helped lead a lawsuit to overturn proposition 8 in california. also, republican consultant matt klink at 8:00 p.m. southeastern here on c-span. >> 2/3 of american people dependent on the network news of those three networks as their primary source of information about the president of the united states. all were hostile to richard nixon. >> go inside the pivotal moments of american history online at the c-span video library. search, watch, and share with every program from 1987 through

today. it's washington, your way. this year students were asked to consider washington, d.c., through their lens. today's winner addressed an issue that better helped them understand the role of the federal government. >> well, i talked with friends on websites like twitter and facebook. >> well, the usual communication. >> i use the internet for research for school papers. >> the internet is something that our generation has grown up with and takes for granted. we use it every day for research, entertainment, and in between. it has always been free and open. and most americans assume it had always will be. but will it?

for people like the executive director of the open internet coalition, the answer is it won't. >> the internet could turn into something that looks more like cable television where the network operators choose what content you're going to be able to access. >> concerns like this are the center of the debate over what's known as network neutrality. basically, network neutrality, or net neutrality as it is more commonly called, is the idea that all traffic flowing across the internet should be treated equally and that internet providers should not be able to speed up, slow down, or block content. sounds feasible, right? well, most people would agree that the principle of net neutrality makes sense. after all, this is a way the internet operated since it started and is still largely the way it operates now. >> there's tremendous agreement that right now there is net neutrality in place where consumers can get the access to the content and applications and

services of their choice. >> the question is, should the federal government get in the business of enforcing this principle through legislation or regulation? or should this be left in the private sector? if we keep it in the private sector, things will remain as they are now. at least we hope they would. but for those of that mentality where people support government intervention because it demises the internet as we know it today is quite possible. >> the technology that the network operators will employ to be able to take content and block it and prioritize it is really still in its infancy. but clearly the network operators would like to be able to monetize the delivery of content on the internet. so that's why we want to have base yuck rules that say we preserve the open and neutral network that we largely have today. >> however, the chairman of netcompetition.org believes differently. >> the issue is whether or not government normally regulates that. so i would have to most

respectfully disagree most strongly with you in the sense that, you know, discussing that just a preserving the status quo. you don't need a legislation or regulation to maintain the status quo. >> to get from the status quo to the land of guaranteed net neutrality, there are several paths that the federal government can take. first, the federal communications commission tries to apply the old or existing regulation. that happened in 2008, when the f.c.c. decided to pledge selectively blocking content on the network. the washington, d.c. federal court ruled that the f.c.c. had overstepped its authorities. the f.c.c. decided to move on to the next one. it would go through a rule making process to clarify its authority so that in future instances off-called net neutrality violations it would have a legal enforcement

mechanism to deal with them effectively. here, the f.c.c. chairman explains one of the three rules that make up the proposed regulations. >> so we're adopting a ban of unreasonable discrimination, and we're making theory that we're not approved so-called priority arrangements involving fast lanes for some companies but not others. >> right now the five commissioners of the f.c.c. are poised to take a vote on this proposed regulation. >> that rule making may cull may culminate as early as december of this year. >> i'm here at the f.c.c. headquarters in washington, d.c., where the five commissioners took a vote on the proposed net neutrality regulation on december 21, 2010. the result that in favor of the regulation along partisan lines. so why did the f.c.c. pursue a regulatory path rather than a legislative one? you may find a clue in the

results of the 2010 mid-term election. as we know, republicans gained control of the house and took away the democrats super majority in the senate. chairman cleland analyzed the election results on this blog and found an interesting fact. out of 95 candidates for congress who pledged their support for net neutrality, not a single one got elected. chairman cleland was careful to emphasize that this did not mean that the elections were lost because of the candidate support for net neutrality. however, this information did lead them to an important conclusion. >> what that instance showed was that the people that most supported net neutrality didn't have the support of the american people in the election. >> he offered this prediction on the prospects of net neutrality legislation to us in our interview. >> well, i don't think you're going to see net neutrality in

legislation through congress. >> but as an average american, how will this net neutrality issue affect me? on one hand, proponents say that net neutrality would level the playing field between big and small companies. >> an open net, internet, is perhaps as much as anything else the great equalizer. it allows people with innovative ideas to succeed on the merit of those ideas. >> on the other hand, opponents say that government involvement would do exactly the opposite of what proposed say it will do. it would give an incentive for entrepreneurs to start small businesses and create ground breaking technologies. there's no problem, don't fix it. you know? because basically fixing a problem that doesn't exist will create many, many worse problems. >> as we can see, the issue of net neutrality demonstrates how intervention of the federal government can and have

influenced our online community. the f.c.c. voted to regulate the internet on december 21, 2010. but don't let yourself be fooled. just because the f.c.c. has approved the net neutrality regulation doesn't mean the battle is over. many people are calling for a congressional review of the regulation in which a simple majority in the house and senate could overturn it. there's also no doubt that the regulation could face serious legal challenges if many take it to court. so americans should expect to hear more and more about net neutrality in the future as the story unfolds. we don't know what's going to happen. but one thing is clear. whether they're for or against it, americans cannot afford to neutral on net neutrality. >> net neutrality. >> net neutrality. >> net neutrality. >> go to studentcam.org to watch all the winning interviews. and continue the conversation about today's documentary on our facebook and twitter pages. >> coming up on "washington

journal," we'll take your questions and comments. and later, live coverage of the day-long conference on foreign policy debates going on in china, india, japan, russia, and iran. also today on c-span2, the commission on wartime contracting is holding a hearing on how u.s. tax dollars are spent on contracting in iraq and afghanistan. witnesses include the special inspectors general for reconstruction in iraq and afghanistan and the department of defense inspector general. we'll have that live at 9:30 a.m. eastern on c-span2. >> next on "washington journal," a discussion about president obama's plans to reduce the deficit with mark zandi. also a discussion on the women's vote heading into 2012 with celinda lake. and later, lynn stanton of telecommunications reports telecommunications reports magazine j