So many Net Neutrality articles have been way too shrill. The authors have kind of lost the plot in their quest to get across the idea that losing it would be the Worst Thing EVAR. Try reading this Huffington Post article as someone who doesn’t know what Net Neutrality means and you’ll be just as in the dark at the end of the article as you were when you started reading it. All you know is that Obama is personally selling us up the river and that the internet will soon be branded. Or something?
Which is why it’s good to see Steve Wozniak’s open letter to the FCC about Net Neutrality. Wozniak approaches it from a very personal standpoint, and makes a great, thoughtful case:
Imagine that when we started Apple we set things up so that we could charge purchasers of our computers by the number of bits they use. The personal computer revolution would have been delayed a decade or more. If I had to pay for each bit I used on my 6502 microprocessor, I would not have been able to build my own computers anyway. What if we paid for our roads per mile that we drove? It would be fair and understandable to charge more for someone who drives more. But one of the most wonderful things in our current life is getting in the car and driving anywhere we feel like at this moment, and with no accounting for cost. You just get in your car and go. This is one of the most popular themes of our life and even our popular music. It’s a type of freedom from some concerns that makes us happy and not complain. The roads are already paid for. You rarely hear people complain that roads are “free.” The government shines when it comes to having provided us pathways to drive around our country. We don’t think of the roadways as being negative like telecommunication carriers. It’s a rare breath of fresh air.
I frequently speak to different types of audiences all over the country. When I’m asked my feeling on Net Neutrality I tell the open truth. When I was first asked to “sign on” with some good people interested in Net Neutrality my initial thought was that the economic system works better with tiered pricing for various customers. On the other hand, I’m a founder of the EFF and I care a lot about individuals and their own importance. Finally, the thought hit me that every time and in every way that the telecommunications careers have had power or control, we the people wind up getting screwed. Every audience that I speak this statement and phrase to bursts into applause.
Fantastic. Thanks for linking to it, Paul.
Woz is an incredibly talented person and I love him to bits, but damn, he writes like a 5th grader.
Amen to that.
This is only one out of many reasons why the Woz is the better of the two Steves.
I wish he hadn’t written the driving metaphor.
One of the reasons transit and development are so fucked up in the post-suburban age is that people do not pay by the mile of public road per day that they use. It would be a better world if they did.
I don’t care, as long as I can drive freely on the open endless highway and have unlimited downloads of free porn.
Except that the more you drive the more gas you buy and there’s a road use tax on the gas so in a way you do pay per mile.
yeah, @5 that may have actually made me re-think being a proponent of net neutrality. Paul, this is an awful argument,
ditto.
people DO pay by the mile for driving.
Gasoline. And gasoline taxes used to fund highway construction.
The more you drive the more you pay.
With the elegant touch that if you drive a fuel effecient vehicle and/or carpool you pay less per mile, but you still pay per mile.
As it should be.
ditto the nets.
“Except that the more you drive the more gas you buy and there’s a road use tax on the gas so in a way you do pay per mile.”
Excellent point, Mike B., and to take it further, you do pay a road use tax not pay it “in a way”. That tax is “hidden” as few of us directly correlate our gas purchasing taxes and a per mile driven charge for road use. We own the roads, the government “maintains” them with a pay per mile tax on gas. We own the internet, the government has licensed use of it to a few cable/mobile managers who will soon attempt to create a pay per bit system too but for reasons relating to self interest rather than public good.
“Except that the more you drive the more gas you buy and there’s a road use tax on the gas so in a way you do pay per mile.”
Excellent point, Mike B., and to take it further, you do pay a road use tax not pay it “in a way”. That tax is “hidden” as few of us directly correlate our gas purchasing taxes and a per mile driven charge for road use. We own the roads, the government “maintains” them with a pay per mile tax on gas. We own the internet, the government has licensed use of it to a few cable/mobile managers who will soon attempt to create a pay per bit system too but for reasons relating to self interest rather than public good.