A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing

My friends and I used to always joke that if it existed there was a techno version and a porn version of it on the Internet. The Internet is, in a way, limitless and has the entire world on it. You can watch just about anything on Youtube and talk to people anywhere in the world. There is no end to what you can do on the Internet but there might be. In 2005 phone companies and the ISPs came up with “net neutrality”, a way of controlling what their customers could use the Internet for. They wanted to create some very harsh restrictions on an independent society. Phone companies and the ISPs planned on starting new neutrality by dividing economic classes, allowing only people of the same economic status to talk to one another on the Internet. So, in short, only the wealthy would be able to see all of the Internet and the poor are stuck using Google and that’s it. I hardly see that as fair.

Net neutrality creates a read-only culture shut out from the lower parts of society. A majority of citizens are unable to pay for the content they need or want. Online courses would only be allowed to the high classed because they are the only ones who can afford to look at the content. This shouldn’t be allowed. The world we currently live in is a world of freedom, is it not? We are in a world that thrives off of freedom if speech (with the exception of some countries that are still restricted). Net neutrality takes all of that freedom away from us when it comes to the Internet.

“But though we could imagine this system of permission, it would be very hard to see how photography could have flourished as it did if the requirement for permission had been built into the rules that govern it” (Lessig 25) Look at it this way; if restrictions had been set on scientists or engineers the medicine that saves millions of people would not exists. In my opinion this same concept applies to net neutrality and the Internet. The Internet is an amazing tool for artists and business owners working as a way to get themselves known. With net neutrality no one can see the digital art created or the online businesses. By placing limits on what is viewable on the Internet, society suffers.

People need to become more aware of net neutrality. We need to be able to fight it and keep the freedom of information we currently have. A change to the Internet like this would most likely cause a sort of mass hysteria among people. Information will be guarded, and our money lost trying to receive it again. We should be able to keep the free culture we have.


Works Cited

Jenkins, Henry. “Convergence? I Diverge.” June 2001. Technology Review. 18 Nov. 2009.

Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture. New York: Penguin Books Ltd., 2004.