Looking back over the last 20 years, the rise of the internet and email, I'm wondering what the internet would have been like if someone like Bush/Cheney had been in office instead of Clinton/Gore. Would the neo-cons narrow interest in new technology, the utility of a technology for militaristic use only, have resulted in an internet that was only for goverment and military use?
Surely, the internet and progressive sites like this were/are a major part of the victory last week. Notice that the far right's only effective use of the internet is to propagate lies, fear and hate through viral emails that contain vile messages and images.
Imagine an internet controlled by Dick Cheney and Ashcroft. A giant and ineffiecient beauracracy, "The Dept. of Internet Tubes" would oversee who could post what where. Securing your own domain would cost thousands and take months to process. Just try to get a passport or get your SS payments straightened out, and you will have a taste of what it would be like to have a Republican administration set the rules for the internet.
My thesis is that if this election had gone the other way, net neutrality would have become a quaint concept discarded into the dustbin of history. The elites who are in danger of losing some power and wealth, surely realize that the internet is a direct threat to their status quo. No longer does thier death grip on conventional media allow them to successfully lie, lie and lie some more. With a McCain victory they would have had the perfect meat puppet to clamp down on the "obvious risk to national security" that an unregulated internet could be propagandized as. I believe the attempt to prioritize internet traffic to suit the whims of corporations would have been the first step on the steep and slippery slope of complete control of the internet.
The internet is the most democratizing technology ever, we must be vigilant that never, ever are the corporations allowed to twist it into just another medium for propaganda only.
The recent actions of Comcast are tests of the public's tolerance for internet censorship and control. Unfortuanately, most people are not savy enough to understand the technology that allows them to download porn and book airline tickets at the same time. For alot of people, it makes perfect sense to censor porn, not realizing that some day some goverment beaurocrat might censor some material that wish to download.
The Obama campaigns brilliant use of the internet has not gone un-noticed by the corporate facists, we must be on guard as they try to pry this powerfull medium away from us.