Know what I don’t get about the whole net neutrality thing? Al Gore created the internet, right? So if Al Gore is such a smart dude, why didn’t Al Gore bake net neutrality into the internet cake he was baking way back in the day?
I also don’t understand what wasn’t possible with the Internet before 2015 (the year net neutrality began). How long has the Internet been around? I mean the real Internet. I remember around 1994 or 1995, there was one computer connected to the Internet at the place I was working. There was one guy that knew something about it and he used to print off lists of things he called search engines and proudly told everyone we could use them. We didn’t know what search engines were until a couple years later.
The Internet in 1997 wasn’t all that. Not compared with the Internet in say, 2014, the year before Obama signed net neutrality into being.
So what was so wrong with the Internet in 2015 that made it necessary to adopt 1930s-era regulations to reign it in?
I’m sure keeping extraordinarily wealthy social media moguls like Zuckerberg firmly entrenched as one-percenters is a part of the net neutrality movement – even though the mouth-breathing goons with their red and black flags have no idea their “grassroots” movement is supporting billionaires.
I’m also sure at its ultimate end, net neutrality is the back door to allow taxation of Internet services. The left has been dying to tax the Internet for a long time. In 2004 Bill Gates was all about “e-stamps” for every email anyone wanted to send: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/02/business/technology-speech-by-gateslends-visibility-to-e-mail-stamp-in-war-on-spam.html As with net neutrality, it was clever marketing to portray “e-stamps” as an anti-spam effort.
So let’s think of the internet as it is today. It’s wild. It’s free range. It’s totally open as far as content goes. You can find anything on there. More importantly, if you can rub two brain cells together chances are you can create something on-line and make a buck off of it.
Let’s imagine next, the long-term result of net neutrality. Innovation is gone. The thinkers of our society moved on to other things. The Internet itself is like using a pay phone with someone peeping over your shoulder. Want to send an email? That will be $0.50 via credit card and credit card only AND KNOW your information isn’t safe in transmission. Wondering what the next big thing that would’ve unseated Facebook might have been? Don’t. Between Zuckerberg and the Jack Ass Party in Congress, Fakebook is here to stay so you can keep that super cool website idea to yourself.
Had net neutrality emerged some years ago, we’d all be stuck using Lotus ccMail, Lycos and Excite, Prodigy, and MySpace. Dial-up, too, no doubt.
Is this how Al Gore thought his amazing Internet would turn out? Sigh. (Pun intended for those that remember the 2000 Presidential election debates. For those that don’t, be thankful net neutrality is gone so you can find it online).
photo credit: World Economic Forum Al Gore – World Economic Forum Annual Meeting Davos 2005 via photopin (license)
