Previously I posted a video about a possible crisis in regards to our internet access. The prevailing question is whether or not an internet provider (RCN, Ma Bell etc) can control to whom/what you have access. Will RCN keep you from accessing Amazon.com? Will Ma Bell rather you use Yahoo to do your searching, so make access to Google slow? This is what people are worried about.
Some of the critique is predictable. "Oh no! Monopoly alert! Free the web!" And on the other hand: "Competition will work this out. We need not fear such a trend. It won't happen." Not that I am an economist, but I think that both of these perspectives are blinded somehow. They are too far to either economic extreme.
First, let me say that I think we all should have equal access to the web. I should get to surf wherever I find my way. Setting up some artificial geography based on who pays whom for access bothers me. It happens enough already on the web. Let it be.
Second, corporations trying to fence in e-space are being competitive. That is what corporations do. Blown to Bits is an interesting book written by some big wigs at the Boston Consulting Group a few years ago. In short it is a book about how business strategy was/is changing. The suggested that it is possible that the day of the corporation limiting choices within a market ay actually be over. Well, not surprisingly, the corporations are fighting back in the ways that they know how. They are buying up the internet. They are limiting access like they do on grocery shelves, and broadcasting areas. This is an old strategy.
Though not surprising, it is disappointing. One of the things that the authors of Blown to Bits suggest is that the internet and the way the technology was originally employed indicates that the public at large is tired of having limited access and corporate control over what they can purchase. Having access to all providers takes us back to some halcyon day of yore where the department store (Sears Catalogue) was about getting access to everything. But somewhere along the way, branding and corporate interest began to have greated power in what we as comsumers have access to. The internet destroyed that reality for those with access to the internet.
The current attempts of corporations is simply the attempt to get control within the new technology. That's all. Sad? Yes. Surprising? No.
There will not be a monopoly. It won't happen. The net is too fluid. It is too easily subversive. Competition is healthy, however, and we need to allow for it. But it is sad to see this kind of competing for e-space and e-resources. Perhaps a healthier e-economy would be one with limitless access...allow the consumer decide the geography. Don't put in the sidewalks until you see where the pedestrians are headed.
Posted by tripp at May 25, 2006 09:42 AM