I'm talking with an editor about a story on broadband, and he's worried that "there is not enough conflict or tension, enough of an issue at stake, a problem to be solved." One conflict I see was described by Rev. Wayne Peck of Pittsburgh's Community House Literacy Project:
The situation is much like that of the oil industry 100 years ago. Just like John D. Rockefeller, the big companies control the pipes and the costs.
Implicit in that statement is that there's a problem with one person or a thousand people controlling production. The conflict becomes greater when one looks at the nature of the internet. The internet does not care who you are what you upload or download (remember, no one knows you're a dog when you're on the internet.) The internet doesn't care if you're a telco executive, a millionaire, or a thirteen year old in Pittsburgh's Central North Side.
So you have, not even a technology, but a protocol, that says everyone's admitted, you don't have to have keys. Doc Searls and David Weinberger describe this best in World of Ends. And then you have a business model that says, "you have to have keys." So I think you can summarize the conflict this way: The internet could work for everybody, but now it only works for a few.
Posted by mastr at March 7, 2003 11:22 AM