Getting a lock on broadband The Federal Communications Commission is quietly handing over control of the broadband Internet to a handful of massive corporations. [Salon]
It seems the world is full of unimaginative businessmen, journalists, government bureaucrats, and politicians who just don't "get it" about the Internet, and broadband Internet in particular. Who does "get it"? Net nerds do -- in particular, the nerds who designed in Internet.
Let's get one thing straight about broadband Internet: it's not video on demand.
This is an important point, because video on demand is a service offered primarily by Big Companies. So, when policy makers equate broadband Internet with video on demand, they concern themselves only with BigCo business.
This view is unimaginative, because it fails to realize that the Internet is the Great Equalizer. I mean that in this sense: The Internet ignorantly passes packets from originating computer to destination computer. I say "ignorantly" because the routers that transmit these packets across the Internet examine only the source and destination addresses -- only the information that is necessary to accomplish the delivery of the packet. The routers do not examine the contents of the packets, and they do not try to be clever. At least that's the way the Internet was originally designed. When the Internet is viewed in that way, it is understood to be completely content neutral. It's that property of being content neutral -- and therefore nondiscriminating -- that has made the Internet so successful in the past, and that must be preserved if we are to see innovation in the future. Thus, the Internet is the Great Equalizer because it doesn't care if the communicating devices are owned by BigCos or small companies.
The reason we need to get policy makers to "get it", is that they need to look to small companies for innovation and get past their focus on BigCos. BigCos don't innovate, they control.
Posted by Doug Sauder at June 8, 2002 11:36 AM