“To be in this job at this time, working on economic issues and our global competitiveness, is something that’s rewarding and that keeps us all working around the clock every day.”īut the question of net neutrality - how open the Internet should be, and the FCC’s role in enforcing that openness - has received the most press attention and controversy of late. “We have real opportunities to help improve the American economy through information and communication technologies,” he said. He said the FCC’s most immediate goals are to employ underused parts of the broadcast spectrum for innovation and increased wireless capacity, and to make the country more economically competitive through technology. “We’re all the products of our background, and I’m sure it informs what I do in many ways.” “The education I was lucky enough to receive is a very important part of my background,” Genachowski, whose schooling has run the gamut from Orthodox day school to Harvard Law School, told the Forward in an interview at his Washington office. Those are tensions he may be comfortable mediating in part because he once was a Talmud ace. The high stakes of his job - which includes complicated issues relating to the regulation of television and radio, as well as to the Internet - mean that Genachowski (pronounced jen-uh-COW-ski) spends his days threading the needle between the interests of global media concerns and grassroots activists, telecommunications corporations and think tanks, Congress and the White House.