Currently viewing the tag: "net neutrality"
Today, the Federal Communications Commission approved new rules on net neutrality that seem designed to appease all parties to the debate but are sure to raise the ire of many. The rules essentially grant the need for and defense of long-term network neutrality —the free and open Internet— for fixed-line web connections, but they nearly erase this protection for wireless connections, putting free speech and technology innovation rights at risk.
WikiLeaks is causing a lot of distress to people in positions of influence, and may be making international relations somewhat stickier, but any member of a free society must at least consider the notion that more transparency is better, even if it makes some who would benefit from less feel a little uncomfortable. WikiLeaks is a complicated ethical watershed, but whether on the right or the wrong side of informational openness, it is a clear landmark moment in the evolution of informational freedom.
Freedom of information and the standard of net neutrality —connection providers not controlling content or access to content in any way— require that information posted online not be removed, blocked, or made unavailable to readers, so long as the publisher wishes to include that content. For content publishers and content consumers to shape the web experience they desire, not only do we need an ethical standard of total net neutrality, but we need a technical standard of zero-downtime bandwidth guarantees.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will take regulatory action to prevent internet service providers (ISP) from blocking or controlling users’ access to online content. The announcement came from the FCC chairman after Comcast moved to manipulate internet access —limiting their freedom to navigate— who had engaged in file-sharing online services, presumably in an effort to control access to content for which the cable provider was not being paid per-content-access.
We are on the verge of a major communications and global economic revolution, in which major media, technological advances, cloud computing and dispersed optimization, adapt to and take over new models for living and producing in human society. The New Scientist magazine reports in its March 15-21, 2008 edition that “web 3.0 will be about making information less free”.
Researchers at MIT have been working for years now on a wide range of variations on the changeable visual text formats that might replace many of the backlit screens we now use to read and interact with electronic documents. ‘Electronic paper’ refers to a number of these technologies, able to reproduce encrypted files in visual text form, as if they were computer monitors, some touted as having “the look and feel” of real paper.
For some time, we have heard speculation that the user-centered logic of the Internet medium will persuade old-guard media powers to embrace the model, and we will see a convergence of online, print, radio and televisual media, in one integrated system. Media integration will likely go far beyond that, so security has to be the watchword as technology invades personal space and our attempts at a ‘pursuit of happiness’.
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