And the winner is ...

2003'S CHIEF disruptive technologist is a) Jack Valenti, b) Attorney General John Ashcroft, or c) Rob Lowe. OK, Rob Lowe is a bit harsh, letting a little thing such as his career get in the way of my fantasy alternate universe where Democrats roam the West Wing and Florida never happened.

But Valenti and Ashcroft are all too real. As head of the Motion Picture Association, Valenti has led the effort to criminalize fair use sharing and prop up the entertainment industry's fading business model. He has retarded the adoption of peer-to-peer decentralized technologies, advanced the DRM (digital rights management) lock-in strategy that proved unworkable in software copyright protection, and seeded draconian legislation that favors legacy stakeholders at the expense of emerging business models.

The attorney general has done his part to disrupt the IT revolution, opting out of individual liberties and into disbanding the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). According to the Washington Post, Ashcroft's Department of Justice cited the Sept. 11 attacks in justifying a directive sent to federal FOIA officers.

"When you carefully consider FOIA requests and decide to withhold records, in whole or in part," the Post quotes the memo as saying, "you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions." To Justice, it's a prudent step to avoid interference in anti-terrorism investigations. To Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and member Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, it's the digital equivalent of Just Say No to congressional oversight of federal law enforcement.

As Ashcroft's deconstruction of the Bill of Rights gathers steam on Capitol Hill, Wi-Fi is coming under similar attack across the Potomac at the Pentagon. As InfoWorld reported, the Department of Defense is worried about possible interference between military radar systems and 5GHz frequencies in the 802.11a range, not the 2.4GHz range used by 802.11b devices.

But before we get too caught up in the negative connotation and consequences of disruptive technologies, let's not forget the other side of these double-edged swords. I consider Wi-Fi the No. 1 disruptive technology, not just for its incendiary growth and liberating use of unlicensed spectrum but also for its profound symbiotic relationship with other disruptive forces.

Take Weblogs, please. Wi-Fi hot spots have turned conferences into virtual events, coffee shops into digital potbellied stoves, and the workplace into one large decentralized water cooler conversation. Trent Lott didn't survive his Sturm und Drang, thanks in part to the bloggers who kept the story alive until the Beltway media caught on.

In turn, blogs have nurtured a growing circle of trust, the mulch for building directories of digital identity based on expertise, communication skills, and critical intangibles -- sense of humor, ethical infrastructure, shared values, and contributed resources. Weblogs provide a variety of Web services for the community: a kind of protective gauze for standards warriors, viral marketing for independent developers, and a watchdog mechanism for legacy media.

In this alternative universe, the chief disruptive technologist is a) Dave Winer, b) Tim O'Reilly, or c) Bill Gates? All have put their money where their mouth is: Winer by contributing SOAP and Scripting News; O'Reilly by donating 200 book titles to the Creative Commons licensing model; and Gates by embedding TCP/IP, XML, and now Wi-Fi.