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Wednesday, November 16, 2005
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 Wednesday, November 16, 2005
started 11/16/2005; 2:13:29 PM - last post 11/16/2005; 9:20:19 PM
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Doc Searls - Wednesday, November 16, 2005 
11/16/2005; 6:13:29 PM (reads: 16524, responses: 4)
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Saving the Net from the pipeholders 
| | I started writing it after a recent surprise visit by David Isenberg to Santa Barbara. He's the one who got me — and, I hope, us — going. |
| | For guidance during the rest of this thing (whether they knew it or not), I also want to thank David Weinberger, Dave Winer, Steve Gillmor, Kevin Werbach, Cory Doctorow, Don Marti, Richard M. Stallman, Eric S. Raymond, Susan Crawford, Larry Lessig, John Palfrey, Chris Nolan, Jeff Jarvis, Craig Burton, Andrew Sullivan, Paul Kunz, Dean Landsman, Matt Welch, Sheila Lennon, George Lakoff, Om Malik, Phil Hughes, J.D. Lasica, Virginia Postrel, Jerry Michalski, Chris Anderson, Esther Dyson, Jim Thompson, Micah Sifry, John Perry Barlow, The EFF, the Berkman Center, the Personal Democracy Forum and others I'm overlooking but will fill in later when I have the time. |
| | Here they are: Bob Frankston, David Reed and Dan Bricklin, Phil Windley, Dave Farber, Elliott Noss, Vint Cerf, Joi Ito, Lauren Weinstein, Bret Faucett, John Clippinger, Kevin Barron... |
| | Although it's kinda huge, Saving the Net wasn't written as a Finished Work, but rather as a conversation starter — a way to change a rock we're pushing uphill to a snowball we're rolling downhill. |
| | There's a thesis involved: that the Net is in danger of becoming what Kevin Werbach calls "a private toiled garden for the phone companies", but that the bigger enemy is in how all of us understand the Net itself. We have choices there, and those choices may mean life or death for the Net as most of us have known it — and taken it for granted — for the last decade or more. |
| | A couple days ago I spoke with a group of several dozen local citizens gathered in the Santa Barbara County supervisors' conference room to discuss forming a broadband task force. Early on, I asked people what the Net was. This brought up an amazing answer: there is no one answer. Anybody can give a clear answer to the same question when the subject is roads, or electrical service or water service. But the Net isn't so clear, even though all of us use it every day. |
| | So the answers were varied; yet one assumption stood out: i's a place, and not just fiber and copper, or a transport system for pumping "content" from producers to consumers. It's something we go on and not just through. Those two concepts — The Net is a Place and The Net is a Transport System — are both true, and yet often at odds, especially when it come to lawmaking, which has been driven to a lopsided degree by industries that live mostly in a habitat the Net has mostly thrived outside of: The Regulatory Environment. This is where the phone and cable companies have an upper hand, and where they have natural partners among the copyright obsessives in the entertainment industry. All those groups want to kill the Net as we know it. If they have their way, the Net we know is toast. In the U.S., anyway. Which, as everybody outside the U.S. can tell you, affects the rest of the world in a big way. |
| | All of it is being made much worse by a lack of consciousness about how we frame our understanding of the Net. |
| | I'm trying to raise that consciousness. |
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tama - Re: Wednesday, November 16, 2005
11/16/2005; 10:59:42 PM (reads: 481, responses: 1)
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Doc, that's a fabulous essay which highlights the battle(s) being fought and the possible ramifications of the changing nature of our beloved internet.
From one of those outside the US, I did find it a little US-centric but, as I mulled this over in my blog, I decided that's a global issue, not just yours! More to the point, for the big battles ARE being fought in US courtrooms more than anywhere else!
So, thanks for the essay, it's a mind sharpener. Btw, can I be the first to make the "Doc 2.0 Manifesto" pun on the place of 'Save the Net' in interwebnerdspeak parlance? ;)
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Doc Searls - Re: Wednesday, November 16, 2005
11/16/2005; 11:42:10 PM (reads: 982, responses: 0)
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Thanks!
I tried not to make it too US-centric. But that's where the cluelessness is concentrated right now. Also where laws are on their way to being written that will screw up the whole world. Also where I live and have marginally more influence than elsewhere.
Anyway, like I said, it's a start. Or a push on balls already rolling.
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John Vaccaro - Re: Wednesday, November 16, 2005
11/17/2005; 12:49:32 AM (reads: 484, responses: 0)
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Thanks for pointing out Frankston and Berlind's excellent weblogs. I've added them to my burgeoning blogroll. Frankston's article goes a long way to nailing the problems with the current businewss model for connectivity. I'm looking forward to reading your Pipes essay!!
JjV
http://johniac.blogspot.com
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Kevin Barron - Re: Wednesday, November 16, 2005
11/17/2005; 1:20:19 AM (reads: 516, responses: 0)
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Brilliant essay Doc! I think we need a rallying cry that is short enough to remember:
the freedom we are protecting here is the freedom to communicate!
Nothing less.
Freedom is not about the choice of silos as you have so eloquently pointed out, it's about the open architecture of the net that allows that freedom.
In envisioning the highway system, FDR did not differentiate between military, commercial, or public traffic (although like the Arpanet, the military use helped to spur development). The freedom to move about has been one of the strenghts of this country. Similarly, we need to ensure that the freedom to communicate is not trapped within *any* silos -- that is only freedom in the sense of George Orwell.
ps. to those who think we are talking about freedom in the sense of free beer, I say get a grip. There are economic models if you are willing to look (Google has).
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