I recently spoke to a group of 30 people and took a moment to encourage them to contact the FCC, and their members of Congress, to express support for net neutrality. Because my time was very limited I looked for an analogy to get the idea across in as few words as possible, and came up with the following:
Imagine that the national Big-Box stores had some measure of control of the road system and could determine the numbers of lanes on roads, the speed limits, locations of toll-roads, and even the traffic light cycles at intersections. Do you think these corporations would regulate the system in a way that was fair to all businesses and patrons, or would they use their control to their advantage -- making traffic flow freely to their own stores while causing traffic snarls around their competitors? If net neutrality is lost, we will face similar questions for fair use of the internet.
A few days later net neutrality came up in a discussion with a friend. As we explored the topic, the question arose of how various evolutionary events for the internet had impacted or would impact its developmental course over the span of time from 20 years ago to 20 years in the future. We wondered how one could weigh the relative significance of the loss of net neutrality among those events.
It was then that I realized that my road system analogy was not purely hypothetical. We now are living in a country that a few generations ago was impacted by powerful corporations exercising control over our transit options. In the early to mid-twentieth century, a campaign was waged to buy up the ubiquitous and highly utilized rail-based transit systems that existed in and around American cities (see the Great American streetcar scandal). GM, along with Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, Mack Trucks, and others, funded two front companies that bought up and dismantled over 100 electric streetcar systems in 45 cities. Granted, there is significant argument about whether those systems, without such interference, would have survived and prospered to the present day, but a few U.S. cities still have rail systems that existed a century ago. This suggests that more of that original infrastructure might be in use today had powerful elements in the automobile industry not moved to eliminate it.
How did the demise of these rail systems impact the development of the cities, their suburbs, and the citizens and businesses in them? Nowadays you can hear about people living in mass-transit-enabled cities who never learn to drive, while the impossibility of having a life in L.A. without a car is a hackneyed joke. In the 1920's the Greater Los Angeles Area had an extensive and well-used private rail system. What if that system somehow had become a regulated public utility (and was operated successfully to the present, a mighty big 'IF' for sure); what would living in L.A. be like today?
Does this analogy offer any useful perspective on the future of the internet if the opponents of net neutrality succeed? In 10 or 20 years will we look back and remember "the Golden Years of the Internet"? Something to ponder while the architects of our (possible) future Idiocracy are moving the pieces around the board.
