Internet Pioneer to Be Named Top F.C.C. Technologist

January 3, 2000
By JOHN MARKOFF

The Federal Communications Commission plans to announce on Monday that it has appointed a pioneering computer scientist and telecommunications expert as the agency's chief technologist.

The appointee, David J. Farber, a University of Pennsylvania professor, drew attention last year when he served as a Justice Department expert witness in the Microsoft antitrust trial.

Mr. Farber, who is currently the Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of Telecommunications Systems at the University of Pennsylvania, will keep his teaching position there even after moving to Washington to work full-time for the F.C.C. later this month.

A pioneer of the Internet, Mr. Farber helped develop the first electronic telephone switches while at Bell Laboratories in the 1960's. During the 1970's, he conducted ground-breaking work in networked computing systems at the University of California at Irvine.

Notably outspoken on technology policy issues, Mr. Farber is perhaps best known in the Internet community for his influential e-mail distribution list, which he calls "Interesting People." To about 25,000 people each day he sends tidbits of information, forwarded from other e-mails and a steady stream of his own thoughts and opinions.

An inveterate traveler and a self-described gadget freak, Mr. Farber has been known to brief his e-mail correspondents on such adventures as his visit to Akihabara, the high-technology shopping district in Tokyo.

In a telephone interview on Saturday, Mr. Farber said that he would be allowed to maintain his list while working for the F.C.C. "I couldn't have accepted the job otherwise," he said.

As a government witness at the Microsoft trial last year, Mr. Farber argued against one of Microsoft's main contentions: that the way the company had chosen to integrate its browser software into its Windows operating system was the only possible technical alternative.

"In general, designers have a huge amount of flexibility in how to package these files, the same way you have a large amount of flexibility in how you put things in a grocery bag, as long as you don't crush stuff," he said in court. "Software is infinitely malleable."

His point rebutted Microsoft's argument that its decision to integrate its browser into the operating system was purely technical and not motivated by a desire to cripple the company's competition.

Mr. Farber, 65, said that he would get involved in a variety of technology issues at the F.C.C., including high-speed and wireless networks, and the impact of the Internet on media the agency now regulates.

"There is a struggle for radio spectrum," he said, "and that is one of the issues we will have to grapple with." Another focus will be the convergence of communications and computing technologies and the infusion of Internet technology into the nation's communications system.

One of the first to understand and speak out on the social, political and economic implications of the Internet, Mr. Farber has maintained a quirky sense of independence from many of the bureaucratic positions of both large high technology companies and governments.

For a time recently, his e-mail carried the following tag line, alluding to the movement of electronic information: "Photons have neither morals or visas."

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