They Were Never Planning on Televising the Revolution

art by Jack Jerz. Click on photo for link.Fake Steve Jobs and blogosphere hater Dan Lyons speculates that the latest FCC net neutrality ruling ushers in the age of consolidation for the Internet:

No matter what you think about the new rules, however, they signal an important turning point in the development of the Internet. We are going from Phase One, where everything is free and open and untamed, into Phase Two, which is all about centralization, consolidation, control—and money.

Because don’t kid yourself. Money is driving all of this. As in: Hey, we’ve created this marvelous new platform for communicating with each other. We’ve demonstrated that very large sums of money can be generated by sending stuff over these wires. Now let’s figure out who gets what.

Tuesday’s new FCC rules grant two big concessions to carriers. First, the rules will apply to wired broadband connections, but they will pretty much leave wireless alone. Second, carriers remain free to create “fast lanes” on the Internet. They can charge Internet companies to ride on the faster pipes, and perhaps also charge consumers more money to get access to those speedy services.

That is a huge deal. It means we are entering an age in which we will have two Internets—the fast one, with great content, that costs more (maybe a lot more) to use, and then the MuggleNet, which is free but slow and crappy. Cable TV vs. rabbit ears.

Lyons further argues that the qualifty of information itself will divide into two Internets, one premium Internet controlled by an oligopoly and one for the commoners to use when they aren't busy with the turnip harvest:

Oddly enough this bifurcation resonates beyond just the speed of our Internet connection. It also is happening to information itself. We could be heading into a world where the rich get better information, from a wider choice of sources, while the poor get less.

That’s already happening, to some extent. If you’re a trader on Wall Street and can afford a Bloomberg terminal, you get better information sooner than the poor schlumps who are home trying to play at being day traders.

It will happen even more as news organizations, like Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and The New York Times, start putting content behind pay walls.

And so the digital divide widens into an information divide, which of course has huge implications for politics, economics, and even democracy itself.

I have several reactions to this.  The first is, so what? Things cost money and the Internet is not a necessity: Internet access looms well above anybody definition for goods and services that should be below the social safety net.  There is no way to justify any sort of claim that Internet access ought to be affordable.

The second reaction is that a future where more and more people get their information from the Internet and fewer and fewer people get their information from Fox News is a utopian future, and I believe this future is inevitable.  Information quality will still improve in kind with users controlling their own information consumption according to their own preferences.  The worst thing an oligarchy can do is call attention to itself.

My third reaction is the Lyons's use of Bloomberg as an example puzzles me.  For years and years and years big investment banks have been recruiting the best and brightest and devising ever more accurate and fast computational investment models that day traders haven't been able to keep up with since there were day traders.  How exactly does access to some Bloomberg service radically change all that?   

My fourth reaction is that of course I'm extremely pissed off about the ruling, which basically is just another example of the government getting involved in something already functioning seamlessly to throw a bone to a few whiney ubercorporations.  I just don't think it will affect free speech or quality of information in the ways Lyons does.  I think people can safely continue to call the broadband carriers's bluff and continue to regularly violate copyright law and support piracy. 

My fifth and final reaction is that, I just don't see a stratification in the quality of information.  In fact, it may be entirely opposite to how Lyons sees it, with the poor having access to better information (like public libraries) and the wealthy being preoccupied with flashy pictures and base amusements.  Whether text, picture, video, or simply data, good information is good information: if the price of quantity goes up, quality will compensate.