The Internet came into being as a DARPA initiative, funded and developed by American tax dollars, long before most people could have dreamed about such a technology. When it first saw widespread use, it was accessed through pay-for-minute plans and those free AOL CDs, so prolific their numbers seemed to approach that of real CDs with actual music on them.
Who after living through that time could ever forget the whine and buzz of a modem as it connected you to the rest of the world, or the busy signals we all got trying to dial our friends on their landlines while they surfed at a blazing 56k? Or how about that first foray into a chat room , or wading into endless lists of fan fiction? So many of the things people still do online were conceived quite early on the Internet journey.
Now, though, I can’t believe how far we’ve come. In minutes or even seconds, I can download a game, binge a series on Netflix, and read news stories from a hundred different countries–often at the same time. People are sharing information with millions or even billions of others instantaneously, enabling the type of communication we couldn’t have dreamed about less than a century ago. The technology at our fingertips today is the stuff of yesterday’s science fiction.
It’s not just the Internet, either. Now more than ever, technology is advancing at an exponential rate. The pace of change is slower today than it will be at any time in the future, or so They say, and I tend to believe Them. Innovation is just an idea away, and the Internet is a vehicle that can take that stray thought and turn it into something real that can affect millions or even billions of lives.
But maybe not in the USA. At least, not anymore.
Cause it appears we’re headed back to the days of pay-to-Internet, when giant corporations already swimming in profit get to tell us what sites we can use and how we can use them. Where they can throttle the competition’s websites to force their customers to either buy their products or go without. When we’ll have to select which sites we want to pay for instead of getting it all in one big, exhilarating mess, a truly free and open Internet which everyone has an equal chance to use however they wish.
You see, our current government is more full than ever of lobbyists and sycophants, men and women desperate to clamber over one another to sell their souls and their votes to the highest bidder. This has been going on since government existed, but never so blatantly as in the fight for Net Neutrality. This is a battleground where even giants are being taken out by larger giants, where doublespeak and outright lies are being touted as the Good Thing the FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, so desperately wants to convince us it is.
“Under my proposal, the federal government will stop micromanaging the internet,” Mr. Pai said in a statement. “Instead, the F.C.C. would simply require internet service providers to be transparent about their practices so that consumers can buy the service plan that’s best for them.”
Don’t you just love how the powers that be always frame taking away our rights and freedoms in language that makes it seem like they’re doing us a favor? In this case, the “micromanaging” this person is talking about entails enforcing laws that treat the Internet as a utility, ensuring companies can’t run hog-wild in the name of profit while denying access to services citizens use and enjoy. Basically, he’s lying through his teeth. Another thing former Verizon employee Ajit Pai isn’t mentioning is the fact that most people already don’t have much of a choice in this so-called free market economy.
As of June 30th this year, 50 million U.S. households have access to only one high-speed internet provider or none at all. That’s 1 in 2.5 households who will be stuck paying whatever their only available telecom decides to charge–if it’s even offered, and if they can afford it.
There are those who decry this as liberal sensationalism (never mind that these giant corporations prove time and again that they will do whatever it takes to squeeze as much money from the middle and lower classes as possible–you know, like lobbying to gut our Internet access in favor of profit) but I challenge them to defend things like Comcast getting laws passed to prevent states from developing their own broadband networks. Is that how the free market is supposed to work? Is stifling individuals in favor of billionaires and corporations what the Founding Fathers envisioned? If they had the foresight to imagine an America under the thumb of oligarchs, I imagine they would have put far more protections in place to prevent the huge monopolies and massive amounts of lobbying that go on today as a matter of course.
This gutting of net neutrality is a fight that proves once and for all that it doesn’t matter what the people want. 22 million comments sent to the FCC were basically ignored unless you happened to couch it in legalese. They asked for comments and then ignored those comments. Blatantly.
We’ve been frogs in pots for so long many of us don’t even realize our lives are being hacked up and sold to the haves and have-mores one piece at a time. Every day, the lower and middle classes fight each other for the right to give away more and more wealth to those who make more in a day than we’ll see in our lifetimes. Again and again we vote against our own interests in favor of people who absolutely do not need our help. They already own the lawmakers. They own our entertainment. They own our news. And now they’re going to own the vehicle by which we access our greatest source of information and communication.
For Thanksgiving in 2017, I plan to give thanks to the soon-to-disappear concept of net neutrality and all the good it’s done both me and every other person in the USA. Then I’ll stuff my face with turkey and potatoes and try to forget that my government no longer even pretends to listen to or act on the will of the people.
Katia Cole 