Tuesday, June 3, 2003" In fact, fewer than 12 companies world-wide control 99% of the Internet infrastructure."
David Spector, in his new blog Zeitgeist, gives us World of Ends? Or, End of the world? Who can tell? He begins:
As much as I respect and admire Doc Searls and David Weinberger, their much blogged piece World of Ends has now run headlong into the on-coming Mack Truck of so-called Media De-Regulation .
He goes on:
The details of this so-called de-regulation are covered ad-nauseum elsewhere but in essence it means that there is now nothing stopping giant media companies from purchasing every communicaitons medium in a market. One company owning every TV station, every newspaper, the cable system, and the phone network in your city. That's pretty darned scary, but here's why the "world of Ends" hypothesis is just so much pollyanna wishful thinking: The Internet isn't an agreement, it's a network. That network, originally built by DARPA contractors, is now a collection of networks controlled by a surprisingly small number of for-profit entities (despite Doc and David's assertion that "no one owns it"). In fact, fewer than 12 companies world-wide control 99% of the Internet infrastructure. These media companies - and network companies with huge and sometimes controlling investments from media companies -- have no reason what-so-ever to act in the interest of democracy and every reason to act in their own interests. It's called "profit."
By the way, David thinks he's arguing against the World of Ends piece that Doc and I wrote, as if we were saying that the Internet will survive all such onslaughts. On the contrary, we wrote the piece precisely because we're worried about clueless government agencies like the FCC making decisions based on ignorance of how the Net's value is anchored in its open architecture. We wrote it because we agree with David that the Net is vulnerable.
I agree (of course). I'll also add that we're talking about ideals here. As I said before to Eric Norlin, "nobody owns it" is true in the same way as "land of the free, home of the brave." It's an ideal that was baked into the thing at the beginning.
More from DS:
What is so sad about all of this is that when the Internet became a separate thing from the ARPAnet which preceeded it, there was a possibility that the Internet could indeed become the democratic nirvana that Doc and David describe. Unfortunately the 3rd most common element in the universe (after hydrogen and stupidity) - GREED - kicked in very quicky. Once telephone companies and cable companies realized that the Internet was a great way to entertain cusotmers it stopped being a world of ends and started being just another content provision medium.
Doc and David (among others) will insist that because there are Blogs, and 802.11 hotspots and other access/networking mechanisms, these greedy and extremely antisocial companies will never be able to stifle debate, discourse and, ultimately, democracy. Well, in the words of Agent Smith from The Matrix "how can you make a call if you cannot speak?"
Two (at least partly) wrong assumptions here (from my POV, anyway):
One is that the telephone and cable companies were just being greedy when they brain-deadened their asymmetrical home broadband services and biased them for consumption-only service. They were being clueless. Still are. And it's costing them business.
The other is that these clueless companies have Matrix-making powers. They don't because they're clueless. The real Matrix is the Marketing/MassMediaMentality Complex, by the way, but that's a whole 'nuther subject that happens to be one of the Big Things the FCC missed in its ruling yesterday.
[The Doc Searls Weblog]
- Posted by William A. Riski - 10:00:35 PM - comment []
