Category: Culture

I have different Net Neutrality worries.

I admit to being somewhat confused about net neutrality, but that probably means I’m only slightly less confused than any of my friends who feel confident they understand it.  My instinct is that (once again) the Internet industry is sowing a bit of fear that (once again) the Internet is in grave danger of not working as it should for “the people.”  I say this because the headlines, cartoons, and editorials most often shared by my generally progressive-leaning friends all convey some variation on the theme that without net neutrality, we will wind up with two Internets — a very very fast Internet for big entities with deep pockets, and a very very slow Internet for the rest of us.  On this matter of the extremely bifurcated web alone, I say hogwash if for no other reason than the fact that no entity stands to benefit from “slowing us down” as it were.  Instead, it is more likely that the fear of being disenfranchised is being dangled in front of consumers because Silicon Valley corporations would like us to subsidize their enterprises — that is more than we already do.  Writes the Chairman of NewCompetition Scott Cleland in an editorial on The Daily Calller:

“The rub here is that what big video streamers, like Google-YouTube & Netflix, really want is for the FCC to ban “paid prioritization” — i.e., the prioritizing of Internet traffic that depends on real-time delivery ahead of traffic that does not.

Translation: Silicon Valley covets a proverbial free lunch on Internet consumers’ tab.”

So, regarding the prospect of the “two Internets” rhetoric, suppose we have an entity called Netflix, which is presently the largest consumer of bandwidth worldwide.  And suppose there are other services just like Netflix, all of which expect to grow in terms of volume, in terms of image and sound quality, and in terms of consumer demand.  Now, suppose we have an ISP or some other entity considering the prospect of making stranded investments in the infrastructure required to enable continued delivery to meet increasing demand for more data-intensive content (e.g. 4K video).  The first question is why it would be unreasonable to propose that the Netflixes or the YouTubes or the Hulus of the world pay rates commensurate with their demand on this infrastructure; and the more important question for consumers is why such a proposal would necessarily result in a lack of access to high-speed connections at affordable prices?  In such a scenario, both the Netflix (content distributor) and the ISP (infrastructure investor) will lose their shirts.  It is in nobody’s interests anywhere to disenfranchise consumers from high-speed access to the web; it would be like filling a store full of expensive inventory, locking the doors, and expecting to make sales.

We do see stories from time to time of a more conspiratorial nature, invoking ideological motivations when implying that a not-for-profit or a start-up will be slowed into extinction on the dusty wagon trail of the “slow” Internet while the big, corporate interests and well-funded political organizations race along the sleek superhighway.  But, again, this doesn’t make any sense from a technical or a policy perspective per se.  The mall across the river from my house has a whopping electric bill in contrast to mine because it demands much more from the power plant than my house ever could.  Nevertheless, the lights in my house come on just as instantly as the lights in the mall.  There is no reason why a major user of bandwidth paying more for that use should slow down a relatively small user of bandwidth.  Moreover, we already have a precedent for “uneven” access in place, and it’s actually more fair than in years past.  ISPs in most, if not all, markets offer tiered pricing for access at different speeds, and this makes sense.  If your neighbor wants to play video games online and needs top speed, why should you subsidize his use, if all you want is email and basic website loading?  We can argue whether or not the prices in place are reasonable, but the principle that consumers pay for what they actually need or want or can afford is hardly unfair. And, again as Cleland points out, this is how the technology works:

‘”Virtually every Internet user also understands that different broadband technologies — fiber, coax, copper, satellite, fixed wireless or mobile wireless — all naturally generate a range of broadband speed lanes because of physics.

The technology one chooses to use naturally creates faster and slower Internet lanes.”

Setting aside overlapping concerns about mega-mergers (I honestly believe that’s a separate issue), one of the interesting aspects of this hotly-contested kerfuffle over net neutrality is that it is so typically American with its many ideological contradictions.  One the one hand, we like to believe that “the internet belongs to everyone,” but of course the only way to make that manifest with regard to investment in maintaining and upgrading the system would be to do so exclusively with public funds.  Such an approach would likely rankle conservatives and progressives for different reasons — free-market, anti-socialist arguments on one side, and keeping the government from “controlling the Internet” on the other.  Thus, ironically enough, by insisting that the “internet belongs to the people,” we functionally insist that it belongs to private enterprise and hope that the people’s government can create a regulatory structure to protect our common interest in having a “free and open internet,” whatever that means.  But not too much regulation, mind you, because again, we don’t want the government to have control;  but we also don’t want the corporations in charge either because all they care about is money and ruling the universe.

So, if you think you’ve got net neutrality all sussed, my hat’s off to you; but if you prefer as I do not to have your day ruined trying to track the many players and their various agendas, my instinct is that I wouldn’t worry too much about the “fast lane/slow lane” thing because none of the big stakeholders has anything to gain from this outcome.  I’d be much more concerned about who’s disseminating this over-simple explanation and what it is they’re after.

The Freedom to Unplug

Photo by the author.

Today, I live in a somewhat economically homogenous community, but back in the 1990s, when we still lived in the financial mosaic of Manhattan, I made a note in a journal somewhere that it seemed to me that people wanted to succeed in contemporary, technological society in order to win the reward of living more as organic beings separate from technology.  Put another way, we live our lives and do our jobs by plugging into systems in order to earn the freedom to comfortably unplug from as many systems as we can.  Why else do leisure-time pursuits so often involve dirt, water, sun, fresh foods, silence, conversation, and a general embargo on high-tech gadgets?

I was thinking about those days while reading an article int he NY Times by Nick Bilton titled Steve Jobs Was a Low-Tech Parent.  Beginning with an anecdote about Jobs’s own kids not being allowed to use the iPad when it was first released, Bilton cites several examples of top executives in the computer tech industry who place some rather strict limits on their own children’s time spent with various devices.  He wonders if these digital executives teaching analog values to their kids might “know something the rest of us don’t,” but I’m not sure that’s quite right.  It is tempting, of course, to calls these tech-industry parents hypocrites for selling their wares to our children while sheltering their own, but I suspect that many of us know exactly what these parents know — that too much screen time is probably unhealthy.  As such, I would not be surprised to learn that households headed by parents who work in the upper echelons of other industries are likewise rigorous about restricting iPads and such for their kids as well.  I really think it’s about economics.

It should be stipulated here that post Boomer parents do have an apparently endless supply of theories about child raising.  We Gen Xers knew two things as our firsts were born:  1) that we had a rapidly increasing wealth of information being made available to us; and 2) that our parents were unflinchingly wrong about everything. (It’s a wonder we lived, really.) Perhaps the most extreme manifestation of these converging phenomena is the conspiracy of parents who still refuse to vaccinate their children, literally bringing hideous diseases back from extinction, thus representing one of the greatest failures of the so-called information revolution.  Certainly, the data are less clear regarding the effects of tech toys on children than, say, pertussis; yet I haven’t encountered too many parents who don’t at least make conscious choices, pro or con, with regard to how much screen time they feel is too much.

Back to economics, though, let’s face it — a contemporary middle-class household is a hectic environment, consistently pressured by the reality that many of life’s basic needs (e.g. medical care) continue to rise in cost outpacing our ability to earn.  Add a couple of kids and their divergent, asymmetrical, and at times unreasonable, demands and we rely increasingly on own devices to achieve that elusive work/life balance they keep talking about in the magazines.  The balance, of course, is the tricky part, isn’t it?

After all, it’s good news/bad news that we can read a client’s email during dinner that got off to a late start because somebody had martial arts practice; but if you are in fact the client (or boss) in that equation, you are unquestionably freer to ignore that email and engage in conversation with your kids just like low-tech Steve Jobs reportedly did.  In turn, the parents’ freedom to unplug models the behavior they want to instill in the child for whom they have set related limits.  But in the frenetic, middle-class household today, patterns or rituals can be very difficult to maintain, and all of our many “helpful” devices and their apps are not designed in any way to complement human rhythms or cycles; they much prefer us multi-tasking, always on, and a bit jittery.  At what point we become extensions of the technology rather than the other way around is an ontological question I won’t attempt to answer.

So, do these tech-industry parents mentioned in Bilton’s article imply a measure of responsibility on the part of manufacturers?  Should we expect Apple to provide warning labels on iPads?  Caution:  Extended time playing Minecraft may make your child a pain in the ass at home and a lousy student.  We probably shouldn’t hold our collective breath for that one or anything like it; and I don’t personally think it is the makers of these technologies who bear that responsibility any more than heavy metal bands are responsible for anti-social behavior in teens.  Nevertheless, these digital tools/toys are unquestionably having both positive and negative effects on kids, and the most important feature for parents, regardless of the promises in every new release, will probably still be the Off button.

The Nation of Reddit

From Redditor yishan:

“…we consider ourselves not just a company running a website where one can post links and discuss them, but the government of a new type of community. The role and responsibility of a government differs from that of a private corporation, in that it exercises restraint in the usage of its powers.”

Shh.  I won’t say anything right away. Just let those words tromp around in your mind for a few moments.  Let the hubris of them get mud all over the carpet and sticky Cheetos fingerprints on the door frames…

 Okay.  Here goes…

In a blog post entitled Every Man is Responsible for His Own Soul, paraphrasing a line from Shakespeare’s Henry V, Redditor yishan explains why Reddit removed a subreddit called TheFappening, making sure to point out that the decision was not based on the content of the thread, which unambiguously refers to masturbating while viewing stolen nude photos of the female celebrities, who were victims of the recent hacking.

In case anyone is confused as to exactly how self-aggrandized social media site owners can be, the managers at Reddit, it seems, perceive their enterprise to be a new form of government.  The Nation of Reddit, if you will, founded not so much on ideas or achieved by blood or steel, not by men (or women) who signed their names to a declaration and risked their lives, but by avatars who speak with the courage of anonymity and wring their virtual hands over the moral implications of profiting from exploitative jerking off.  What exactly will the flag of this new sovereign society look like?  Crossed swords, I suppose.

Though Reddit is a young nation, Ambassador yishan, exhibits the diplomatic nuance of a veteran stuffed suit when he proclaims, “Virtuous behavior is only virtuous if it is not arrived at by compulsion.  This is a central idea of the community we are trying to create.”  Once again, perhaps we should pause and just let the big idea resonate for a moment…

Right.  Moving on…

It’s true, of course.  Virtuous behavior can only be called virtuous when it is altruistic.  But failing that, sometimes we have to tell the assholes to knock it the hell off.  You know the ones — the guys who stand up and go for the luggage compartment while the plane is still taxiing.  Yeah, even in the freest of countries, that clown has to be told to sit back the fuck down in case the pilot has to step on the breaks and thus turns him into a 180-pound idiot projectile.  In a similar way, The Nation of Reddit could certainly choose to support free expression, even of the most puerile gibberish, while drawing a fairly clear line that it will make every effort to avoid benefiting from someone else’s misery.  Professional news organizations draw lines between coverage and exploitation all the time, and free speech manages to survive, but I guess that’s elitist.

As pointed out in this excellent piece by Ellen Seidler, The Nation of Reddit is actually a satellite state of the empire CondeNast Publications, and its wealth, like most web nations, comes from tourism (i.e. advertising).  As such, stolen celebrity nude pictures unquestionably bring the visitors in profitable numbers, but apparently, the government of Reddit feels it would be morally objectionable to refuse this windfall, which is nothing more than a byproduct of its absolute defense of free expression.  But as Seidler also points out, non-celebrities, usually women, who don’t have the resources of movie stars are frequent, un-reported victims of misappropriation of their images that are then exploited by stateless nations like Reddit and the rogue 4Chan.

The actual quote from Henry V comes in the scene when Harry walks cloaked in disguise among his men on the night before the battle at Agincourt.  A soldier, Williams, opines that the virtue of the war and the inherent sinfulness of death in battle is the sole moral responsibility of the king.  But within in the ensuing monologue, Harry replies, “Every subject’s duty is the king’s; but each man’s soul’s his own.”  It is poetry, but it is also a poor reference for a modern, free, and democratic society far removed from ancient monarchy.  Because our more enlightened view is that we do blame the leadership and not the soldier for entering into a bad war.  And we do hold business owners, the ones who make the real money, responsible for the manner in which they earn their revenues.

But here’s the main message we might send The Nation of Reddit:  If you’re apologizing for shutting down a thread called TheFappening, at least spare the world your ideological bullshit as if we’re supposed to think you’re doing something important.