Into The Great Wide Open
Written by Major Tom
Filed under: Science & Technology
May 29, 2006
Every time I log-in into the Internet, I always have that feeling of exaltation, like I am entering into a whole new world —like Alladin or Lea Salonga for that matter, 
as she sang that saccharine song featured in that cartoon movie—and such experience reminds me also of Tom Petty’s “Into The Great Wide Open”. There is just so much out there in cyberspace that can be had or browsed upon. Type the word in the search box and voila, you get to know something about that something you want to know about. You can have knowledge about everything—not almost everything, but exactly everything.
But now, the days of the wide-open cyberspace will soon be over, this according to a CNN report as money-rich lobbyists from AT&T and Time Warner (which happens to be the mother company of our favorite cable news network) are furiously blocking the passage of laws that would prevent communication companies from establishing a two-tiered Internet gateway, one fast and one slow. Those sites that have the money to burn can pay these media companies to give them wider bandwidth and make their websites load faster on your browser and those that have not much to spare would have to contend themselves on the usual (meaning, slower) lane. It’s like an invisible tollway in the cyberspace where only the mighty can pass through. To be sure, not all website operators could shell-out extra dough for a faster loading lane, especially bloggers like us. And we bloggers would surely be affected negatively by this development and all benefits would only go to giant but still money-hungry mega-companies like AT&T and Verizon Wireless.
Maybe the United States Congress should do wisely by pushing thru with that law that should prevent these companies from establishing the double-standard in the netsphere. We’ve just been okay with this system and I don’t see any valid reason to change it. Why put a wall between two classes of webbies when there wasn’t any at all in the first place? We’ve have had enough of walls already—the wall that prevents Palestinians from moving freely in Jerusalem, the Berlin wall, the Great Wall of China, the 38th Parallel dividing South Korea and North Korea—I say, bring down and burn down the walls.
And lastly, why fix it if it ain’t broken in the first place?
Test Comment
Comment by Major Tom — May 30, 2006 @ 4:23 pm
Interestingly, in the States, a price war among Internet high-speed access providers benefited the middle class. Record numbers had signed up for DSL service at $14.99. I used to pay like 50 dollars a month on my Time Warner cable broadband service. (see AP report: Middle class goes broadband as price falls -
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060529/aponhite/broadbandaccess_3
As for this two-tier Internet access being proposed by the giants, my hunch tells me that with the price of technology eventuallydecreasing (as it always does), this may never see the light of day.
I do, however, feel that the broadband Internet infrastructure will further improve and eventually become even cheaper for the subscribers. And high speed access providers will remain to rake in huge revenues through the sheer volume of new subscribers.
Comment by Erisac — May 30, 2006 @ 4:28 pm
If that’s the case señor, it’d be delightful for us afterall. Competition benefits the consumers somehow but I just worry that a two-tier access to the Internet may establish a regretful dula-standard in the cyberspace where some well-funded site could load very fast but others, like blogs we opearte, would load so much slower.
Comment by Major Tom — May 30, 2006 @ 4:32 pm
But should a two-tier high-speed access does occur, I’m pretty sure some enterprising young people — in some garage in the suburbs or in a dorm in some campus — will come up with a radical alternative (remember napster?). I wouldn’t be surprised if some sort of viable (prototype) alternative already exists at MIT’s or Stanford’s media lab but just awaiting for Cisco Systems to develop the necessary hardware to run it. I still have faith in our young people’s inchoate ability to rattle the corporate behemoths every now and then
Comment by erisac — May 30, 2006 @ 10:52 pm
I wouldn’t worry about that, the American public is a force to contend with especially with regards to rights of access to information. Any law that would prevent, disable or limit that right will meet stiff opposition in congress.
Comment by snglguy — May 31, 2006 @ 12:50 am
To erisac: I was just reading about this on Newsweek. In fact right now, some alternatives to the mainstream Internet is already operating. especially one in Europe. Many nations in fact is so much worried about the US domination of the Internet, like Iran and China, where they fear the US Goverment could just turn off their sites as a fprm of embargo. Right now, all web domains, or almost all, is being adnministered or runned by ICANN, a california-based private company.
To sngl: I have the same feeling sngl but you know, these huge companies have huge funds and sometimes, even in American politics, money talks. I just hope it won’t happen at all.
Comment by Major Tom — June 1, 2006 @ 5:00 pm