This morning I felt like writing a piece about a subject that is very near and dear to my heart: Net Neutrality. Though as I started I got a feeling of Deja Vu. Oh wait. I already wrote that post, didn’t I? After taking some time to reread it, I’m pretty satisfied with the position I outlined there with the exception of the last couple sentences.
So with that in mind, it’s only fair to start this post off with a correction. Tom Wheeler was probably the best thing to ever happen to the FCC. When Obama appointed him, it appeared that he was just going to play the role of yet another industry lobbyist traversing his way through the revolving door of public “service” and I assumed as much. I could not have been more wrong. In this case, that thrills me to no end. Wheeler came down on the right side of Net Neutrality and fought hard to give us all exactly what we needed. He did his job and he did it to the best of his ability.
But now we’ve got the Trump Administration to contend with. Despite their immense and obvious incompetence on virtually every front imaginable, it seems they might actually manage to roll back a few Obama era policies: Net Neutrality being the most likely to fall sooner rather than later. In fact the situation is so dire that it is unlikely we can salvage it at this point. The FCC has already scheduled a vote to dismantle the policy and they have the votes they need to complete the execution. The chairman, Ajit Pai is a partisan hack of course and a former corporate lawyer for Verizon. Unlike Tom Wheeler, he is the exactly the type of piece of shit you’d assume he was based on that resume alone.
So what can we do? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Everybody in modern society benefits from the work of those that came before them. This is one of those cases. Net Neutrality is going to fall by the end of the year and the internet will be worse off for it. But at this point I think things have to get worse before they can get better. Otherwise the people who benefit most from it won’t be able to actually appreciate it.
In my opinion that would be the greatest tragedy of all. Because if people now don’t understand it and appreciate it, then there is virtually zero chance that their children will understand it and appreciate it. Which means that eventually we are going to end up in this position anyway. My opinion is that its just best to get it over with. I imagine it won’t take more than a few years of “Telecoms Gone Wild: Internet Edition” before people will have had enough. At least… that’s what I hope.
So join me and let’s hope that the forthcoming Internet dark age will be short lived. Because really that’s all we have left to cling to: Hope.