Blog Post #2: The (Future) History of the Internet.
It’s just about perfect that while my syllabus for this class is reminding me that I have to post something about The History Of The Internet, the future of the Internet is being debated in Congress. There’s a lovely summary of the current standoff by Anne Broache, staff writer for CNET News.com here. (It’s amazing to me that while I’ve been reading about this Net Neutrality business in blogs and printed articles for weeks and I’ve heard about it on National Public Radio and I’ve clicked on internet ads on the subject … and even though it’s being debated by Congress this week, Net neutrality is still not listed among Google News' Top Stories. As a matter of fact, I had more success just Googling “net neutrality” than searching through Google News.) More precisely, the debate is over passage of the Communications, Consumers' Choice and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006. This is not just a two-sided debate (is it ever, really, that simple?) but Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig makes an interesting point about the figureheads taking sides here:
“The pro-NN contingent is filled with the people who actually built the Net — from Vint Cerf to Google to eBay — and those who profit from the competition enabled by the Net — e.g., Microsoft. The anti-NN contingent is filled with the entities that either never got the Net, or fought like hell to control it — telecom, and cable companies.”
I hesitate to support such blanket statements here. Merely viewing the comments added to Lessig’s post demonstrates that there are a great many people who feel strongly that legislating neutrality of this kind will not accomplish what NN’s proponents want. But Lessig also notes that World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee is also a NN supporter. And because I found them so fine-tuned and matter-of-fact, Berners-Lee's observations are, I think, worth quoting at length:
“Net neutrality is this: If I pay to connect to the Net with a certain quality of service, and you pay to connect with that or greater quality of service, then we can communicate at that level. That’s all … Control of information is hugely powerful. In the US, the threat is that companies control what I can access for commercial reasons. (In China, control is by the government for political reasons.) … Yes, regulation to keep the Internet open is regulation. And mostly, the Internet thrives on lack of regulation. But some basic values have to be preserved. For example, the market system depends on the rule that you can't photocopy money. Democracy depends on freedom of speech. Freedom of connection, with any application, to any party, is the fundamental social basis of the Internet, and, now, the society based on it.”
Maybe contemplating the future of the Internet without posting about its history is a bit of a cop-out, assignment-wise. One of the things that amazes me about the time I spend on the Internet is that there is always more to read and to study than I have stamina to spare. Sigh.
“The pro-NN contingent is filled with the people who actually built the Net — from Vint Cerf to Google to eBay — and those who profit from the competition enabled by the Net — e.g., Microsoft. The anti-NN contingent is filled with the entities that either never got the Net, or fought like hell to control it — telecom, and cable companies.”
I hesitate to support such blanket statements here. Merely viewing the comments added to Lessig’s post demonstrates that there are a great many people who feel strongly that legislating neutrality of this kind will not accomplish what NN’s proponents want. But Lessig also notes that World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee is also a NN supporter. And because I found them so fine-tuned and matter-of-fact, Berners-Lee's observations are, I think, worth quoting at length:
“Net neutrality is this: If I pay to connect to the Net with a certain quality of service, and you pay to connect with that or greater quality of service, then we can communicate at that level. That’s all … Control of information is hugely powerful. In the US, the threat is that companies control what I can access for commercial reasons. (In China, control is by the government for political reasons.) … Yes, regulation to keep the Internet open is regulation. And mostly, the Internet thrives on lack of regulation. But some basic values have to be preserved. For example, the market system depends on the rule that you can't photocopy money. Democracy depends on freedom of speech. Freedom of connection, with any application, to any party, is the fundamental social basis of the Internet, and, now, the society based on it.”
Maybe contemplating the future of the Internet without posting about its history is a bit of a cop-out, assignment-wise. One of the things that amazes me about the time I spend on the Internet is that there is always more to read and to study than I have stamina to spare. Sigh.
posted by andystardust at 6/22/2006 11:17:00 PM
4 Comments:
Hey Andy,
If it is a cop-out - I'm guilty as well:-) See my post about the subject. But really, it's all connected. The reason many people are up in arms stems from the very way that the internet has grown into what it is today. Great post.
Hi Laura. Yes, I saw that you posted on the subject, too. Maybe we can touch on this in the next class.
1. Love Maus.
2. I don't know if you subscribe to Science Talk, the podcast for Scientific American. The May 31st episode featured a discussion about NN with Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center of Digital Democracy. The interview helped "clarify" this issue for me. So the price a website pays to the telephone/cable company determines the speed of access to their site?
A NN appears to be about distribution; however, it can easily turn into one of censorship. I can envision telephone/cable companies hiking up prices for websites with "questionable" content. Of course who determines what is and what isn't questionable.
Does that make sense or did I completely miss the point?
Hi Joy. I hate that I can't reply to your comment and instead have to comment again to my own post. How are you going to know I wrote this? In any case, I think you've grasped the issue. For me, the bottom line is that the telecom industry is saying, "Trust us. We won't abuse the right we're asking for to raise rates." And when has it ever been a good idea to trust a telecom company?
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