Will 2012 be the Year that convergence finally happens?

That brings me to the need for a converged debate on who owns what intellectual property and for how long. Do we have copyright in our personal information, identities (note that I use plural) and DNA? Should attempts to make us sign away those rights without informed consent be void? And if so, what does informed consent mean?  Meanwhile the BRIC nations are likely to copy the past policies of Western nations whose economic growth in the 18^th and 19^th centuries was based on ignoring the intellectual property rights of others.  The California lawyers of today are likely to have as much success on the opposite side of the Pacific as Edison's lawyers had when they tried to enforce his rights on film studios established on the opposite side of the USA. Meawhile rights-holders nearer home are facing the on-line equivalent of the Arab Spring, as the "Internet Native generation" combines to take out their enforcement operations.

And what about regulatory convergence? 

Has the time come to put Ofcom's telecommunications roles into a converged UK Utilities Regulator.  Nations like Germany have already accepted that communications infrastructures should be regulated in tandem with the other critical utility infrastructures on which society depends. Does it make sense to separate the transport layer from the content layer? If so, where does the address layer sit. Given the unresolved power struggles over privacy and  surveillance, let alone those over the responsibilities and liabilities that go with claims to content ownership, would it not be more sensible  to copy the approach to the 2003 Communication Act and separate out that which is urgent , if anything,  from that on which  may well be politically impossible  to secure meaningful agreement?   

We can see the lobbying efforts of the dominant fixed and mobile operators, on-line service providers and content publishers ramping up in advance of the Communications Green paper. The 2003 Act has been described as "out of date" because it gives Ofcom such limited scope to regulate the Internet. That was, however, a very deliberate political decision. We should think long and hard before we add Ofcom to the armies of overlapping and feuding, national and international, bodies who have turned what was supposed to be a liberating force into the most regulated medium the world has ever known. Meanwhile what sane politicians wishes to be caught between the "Internet Natives" and the "Copyright Enforcers" when they join battle over "making sense of the Digital Economy Act" and the associated EU Directives?   

Back to my opening question: will 2012 be the year in which convergence finally happens and helps bring about economic recovery?

Not if the politicians and bureaucrats are allowed to plan the way ahead.

If our children and grandchildren are to have a future we have to allow market forces to compensate for the political and regulatory failure that has led us to where are today.

We have to copy the bonfire of regulation which enabled the first industrial revolution to gather speed, in Britain, in the 1780s, if we are to avoid a failure of planning and control akin to that which led to "regime change" in France in the 1790s.

We also need to begin in spring 2012 - the riots of last summer may well be repeated during the Olympics if we have not already begun to give hope for the future to our social networking savvy NEETs - including involving those who already have criminal records in stewardship roles. Now there is a challenge for converged thinking - getting LOCOG and the IOC to live up to their side of the bargain for a socially inclusive, multicultural London Olympics in the time that is left.