July 17, 2006

Get this: I love the net. There are few human inventions I treasure more; damn, there are few things I treasure more. Consciousness predated the net only by a slight margin in my life, and I can’t help but be a part of the translucent generation it has engendered, the first generation whose values have been shaped by the net.

Yet, I fail to understand what all the brouhaha regarding net neutrality is all about. Of course I’m moved by all the calls to action and won’t-somebody-please-think-of-the-children threats of impending netdoom, but I fail to see the real problem, the “great injustice”. And beneath the obvious good intentions, the rhetoric with which this argument is being fought by “my side”, the side of prominent netheads (Google’s Vint Cerf for instance), reeks of governmentism, stasism, and don’t-let-walmart-wreck-your-downtown anti-capitalistic sentiment—not my cup of tea.

Frankly, it all seems to me as articulate special-interest groups arguing for the right to impose their vision of the net on telcoms. This may well be the net’s first reactionary upheaval of nostalgia and status quo¹, the first symptom of the sclerosis that plagues every human institution. An end-to-end internet is one of the greatest accomplishments of modernity, a vision I personally cherish, and the one that has successfully guided the web up ‘til now—granted. But that doesn’t mean I want it imposed on others, it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t allow others to experiment with new visions. If we really cherish it so much, shouldn’t we be willing² to pay for it its true economic price? If it is truly the one best way, shouldn’t it be able to survive competition on its own merits? It seems like a particularly devious contradiction to call net intervention net neutrality.

With this in mind, it was a blow of fresh air to find T. J. Rogers recent opinion on the issue:

It was only later that I found out why Rodgers sounded so rational: he’s a libertarian. Also to treasure from that interview is this fragment:

Every libertarian I’ve known of has had this respect for personal, boot-maker, contextual, decentralized knowledge, this hard social virtue of refraining from telling other people what to do (expressed even more clearly later in the interview: “I don’t want to second-guess the people that are trying—I’m not an expert—and they’ll surprise you when they do.”). They all recognize the world’s complexity and the great problems of our models of it. So yeah, I liked this guy. I googled him and I found out this most-interesting open letter from him and a book of his on Amazon, No-Excuses Management, that I promptly ordered.

Anyway, back on topic, what do you think on net neutrality? What am I failing to see from this tangle? Why do so many smart, visionary people oppose it?

Lalo—who taught me, with passion, Mexican history and economical development in high school—used to talk somewhat mockingly of some of his scientist friends who lived isolated from the world and, particularly, from politics; they thought themselves beyond it and preferred to live their lifes pondering deep thoughts back in their ebony towers; “they wouldn’t realize a political revolution had arrived until they were shot,” or something along those lines.

I agreed with it then and promptly forgot it with gusto when it was my turn to think deep thoughts in the ebony towers of CIMAT, where I studied Mathematics for some years. These days of alleged post-electoral unrest in Mexico, when most anyone in the country is fed up with politics, and politicians are having a hard time leaving their six-yearly limelight, I remember those words.

A few months ago, coming back to my old high-school and chancing on Lalo, it was interesting to discover his complete isolation from technology, and, particularly, from the web. He used his computer exclusively for email, never searched, had no idea what a blog was, didn’t know about Wikipedia, and in general didn’t think much of digital contraptions of any sort (!).

That may have had a lot to do with age but my point is that he was missing on one most important sphere (my preferred one, of course). “He wouldn’t know the singularity had arrived until he were absorbed into computronium”—or something alone those lines.

Of course I’m exaggerating, but I neither want to mock Lalo nor defend single-minded obsesiveness. It’s just that the preponderance argument could be made on many, many other spheres of life—economy, finance, culture, ecology, art, design, animal trainers… The world is far vaster and far more complex than we like to acknowledge, and we all suffer from interest myopia (the farther from our interests something is, the fainter and blurrier it is in our picture). Arguing for the preponderance of one sphere is usually self-interest lobbying.

Some weeks ago I was very interested in folksonomies because I was trying to build yet another one (though a political one at that). During my journeys I found out that Del.icio.us has a special kind of tag for filetypes—system:filetype:FILETYPE_HERE. Mixing it with the popular tag, I found many truly wonderful media shards for the filetypes that came to mind—mp3, jpg, jpeg, pdf, gif, png, mov.

Here they are, lest time forgets:

Vaya! Sergio acaba de prestarme un DVD con 4 gigas de literatura en Español, es desbordante, demasiado. Nuestro futuro mediatico es la saturacion al borde del colapso.

Por lo pronto, encontre por fin esta cita que tanto busque otrora: