Net Neutrality Links
I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.
Breaking the Matrix is my column in the October issue of Linux Journal. It goes beyond Net Neutrality arguments to explore the possibility of (nay, the need for) a truly open marketplace for connectivity. Some excerpts:
Far more powerful is a belief, held by nearly everybody in the developed world, that the best markets are captive ones. In the Free Software and Open Source movements we call captive markets “walled gardens” or “silos”. But to most producers in the developed world, these are ideal. And to most consumers, they are business as usual.
Even after the Net obsoleted closed on-line systems, Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft continued to silo instant messaging inside their own walled gardens. In 2006, there should be no excuse for this.
Yet there is. We continue to believe, as both producers and consumers, that silos are okay. And worse, that a “free” marketplace is one where you get to choose the best silo.
We see this in the US today with our “choice” of services from phone and cable carriers. We even think the Net itself is a grace of telecom and cablecom carriage. After all, those are the guys we pay to get it. Those are the guys who have gradually increased our connection speeds.[ . . . ]
These carriers can no more appreciate a truly free market than an agent in The Matrix can imagine a world not run by machines….
You have to be free to see how absurd silos can be. You have to see markets as wide-open spaces opened by ubiquitous relationships, and potential relationships, between digital devices and the human beings who use them. You have to see unrestricted possibilities for the people and organizations putting those devices, their applications and their data to work. Those possibilities lose their limits once you set your mind free of the notion that a free market is just a choice of silos.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE