It is
generally known that the internet has revolutionized almost every aspect of
society. Access to the internet has
become just as ubiquitous as the telephone – common in everyday use. While this use, for many people, simply means
the ability to socialize with friends or get some shopping done quickly, the
internet also, and more importantly, fuels digital innovation. It does this chiefly by enabling new
combinations of technologies. The Waze phone app combines GPS and social
media to provide the best possible driving routes. Yelp combines GPS and restaurant reviews to
help a traveler quickly find a great place to eat – and then provide real-time
driving directions. Google Assistance
pairs artificial intelligence and a mobile phone camera to chronicle a user’s
friends and family, creating memories that will last forever. These are examples which exemplify how important
open internet access is for today’s digital world. If technological development is a major goal
of our society, and if laying a groundwork for future innovation is a priority,
then internet access should be considered a basic utility – equally open for
everyone to access.
In
modern discussion, this concept is more generally referred to as net neutrality
– an idea around which proponents have gathered on both sides, either for and
against. On one side are the established telecommunication companies who
want to protect their profits by limiting regulation of their business.
On the other side, there are the supporters of net neutrality, who argue that telecommunications
companies, in the name of greater profits, will eventually force certain
internet services (for example: Facebook, Google, or Amazon) to pay for faster
service, thereby throttling speeds for others services who do not pay, giving
the incumbent firms an advantage over new competitors. Another fear is
that preferred access to specific sites will be bundled together into consumer packages,
much like television sports packages offered today, which come with additional
fees per month. Ultimately, the idea that internet access being curated
or tailored that would give preference to certain organizations, by grim necessity
means that other groups will – to at least some degree - be excluded. This
inherent exclusion would hamper future open innovation by creating a stranglehold
on the internet by the telecommunications industry, even more so than it enjoys
today. Even worse, this exclusion would
hinder those who seek to create new advanced technologies, which is required if
technological advancement is a serious goal of society.
Back
in 2014, two MIT researchers, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, wrote a book about something they coined
"The Second Machine Age"[i] -- a not-too-distant future defined by
an explosion of technical innovation and economic growth, primarily fueled by
the invention of the computer and, subsequently, the internet. They based
their concept on the industrial-era first machine age, when the invention of
the steam engine acted as a great enabler by propelling (often literally) the
developed world forward exponentially -- in terms of both economic growth and
quality of life. One key concept, they say, is that the boom did not take
place immediately after the invention of the steam engine -- it took time to
fully adapt to the new technology, through innovation. In just the same
way, it has taken decades since the advent of the computer for the services
which, up until today previously unthinkable, to come to market and be
commonplace. This is due primarily to
the dramatic increase of two factors in the last several years: computing power
and connection speed over the internet. Brynjolfsson and McAfee purport that the world is
soon approaching the start of their second machine age, heralded by the
development of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics,
and big data analytics. However, no matter how advanced any singular
technology is, the key ingredient will always be what brings everything
together, the connectivity. This key
ingredient, open internet access, paramount in bringing about the second
machine age.
This is evidenced in two
ways. First, open innovation is the
hallmark of the internet -- it would not exist, at least not in any meaningful
way, if the early pioneers were simply out for a profit. Instead, both academics and nerds-in-general
worked together to build something that benefited the entire world on many
levels. They did this by creating an
infrastructure that was open and could be sequentially built on – agnostic to
whether the development was by a commercial entity building a website to sell
things, or a group of friends setting up a beer trading discussion board. In other words, the internet benefits
everyone, and enables free competition among businesses by not placing
restrictions on smaller companies. For big
business and government to now try and somehow alter this basic tenant would be
an egregious attack on information freedom and the innovative power of society.
Second, most innovation is not done through raw invention,
but by combining technologies – combinational innovation. The steam engine itself did not single-handedly
deliver the world into the first machine age – it took a few decades. Through combinational innovation during the
first machine age, society experienced a drastic boom of technological
advancement and economic growth, and it is the same today with the
internet. As advanced as some services
are today, at its core the internet is not much more than the networks academics
used to share information in the early days.
Simply put, it will take time for innovators to fully deliver on what
the internet has paved the way for. We
have not yet reached the point of stagnation – novel products are still coming
to market almost daily that can compete with larger, more established market
offerings. As Brynjolfsson writes, “Not
only are the new technologies exponential, digital, and combinatorial, but most
of the gains are still ahead of us. In the next twenty-four months, the planet
will add more computer power than it did in all previous history. Over the next
twenty-four years, the increase will likely be over a thousand-fold.”
For telecommunications companies, big business, or the
government to influence what can and cannot be accessed on the internet would
be relegating it to the domain of mere entertainment, where sports packages can
be bundled and maximum profits can be realized.
But the internet has become so much more than that – it is now an
enabler of healthcare services, life/safety equipment, and critical
infrastructure -- every day becoming more and more a basic, fundamental
requirement of modern life. For these
reasons, it is imperative that lawmakers and industry leaders remain vigilant
to ensure that the internet remains open and accessible to all, as a basic
utility.
[i] Brynjolfsson,
E. (2014). The second machine age: Work, progress, and prosperity in a time of
brilliant technologies. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
