Dillon Deliberating

Digital communicators rely on the Internet to deliver communications objectives.  They do this in some cases using tools that we take for granted.  That Facebook discussion, a Twitter Q & A exercise or our communications goals are achieved using tools offered by Google.  However digital communicators should on occasion step back and question the industry that provides the tools they come to rely on. This is what I did recently after attending a talk by Tim Wu whose book 'The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (2010) inspired this blog post. 

Once applied, history can be something of a leveller.  Take for example the Internet which even in 2011 has the ability to astound and even hold you in awe of its power, especially in field of communications.  Where there is the Internet the word 'revolution' is never far behind.  So it was refreshing if not a bit sobering to hear Professor Tim Wu at the RSA recently, framing the Internet within a historical perspective.  By framing it in this way Wu allows the Internet to stand comparison to other media such as radio, television and films.  In their day all three of these mediums induced great bursts of idealism with grand proclamations of how they would benefit humanity.  Truth be told, they did, Wu in his talk he paints a picture of the early part of the 20th century of rank outsiders, amateurs and those who dreamt of making a fortune utilizing these emerging technologies.

The period was a wild west of ideas  with some unlikely innovators, for example farmers in remote areas of the U.S. who would hook up to early telephone lines not just to chat to one person but many.  Nor would they just talk but would  play music, tell jokes, trade gossip, one such farmer was Edward Burch who as part of a movement of early telephone connectors who would at pre-arranged times broadcasted to his neighbours from his telephone.  Not exactly the Twitter of its day but the keyword here 'connect' for him it was a telephone but today we 'connect' but do so over the Internet.  Running alongside and even before Burch were bigger players whose companies bear the name of what would later become giant monoliths like CBS, NBC, Fox and Paramount films.  Their founders where the great disruptor's of there day who fought against and subsequently created monopolies. They sought to control these emerging technologies. Disruptor's came in many forms and not all good, take Zukor for example whose vision for cinema was one of vertical control that allowed  Paramount to own the various layers that make up cinema; actors, studios, distribution and the the theatres.  One keyword mentioned earlier was to 'connect' the other key word that would come to dominate the information empires would be 'control'.  In Zukor, we can see a palimpsest  of Steve Jobs who is rightly lauded for innovation but is not shy when it comes to control.  Over at Slate Magazine Tim Wu produced profiles of each of the key players that created information empires starting with Theodor Vail (Telephony) , Adolph Zukor (Cinema) , Steve Ross (Time Warner), Ted Turner (TV) and Steve Jobs (Apple) all of whom are referred to as 'The Great American Information Emperor's.

What Tim Wu reminds us is that  during the 20th and the early part of this century the emergence of monopolies within the information industries of which today's internet is a major part.  The internet we learn from Tim Wu like many emerging technologies when they arrive do so with a burst of idealism that overtime incurs a relative decline. A sign of that relative decline is a lack of innovation with the technology delivering up an information products of mediocre proportions.  Today we can see Apple, Google, Facebook and to minor extent Twitter taking up what are the commanding heights of the digital landscape.  These are companies born from Schumpeterian innovation and are a  prime example of what can emerge from democratic states with capitalism as their economic model.   However over time these giant's of the information industry start to resemble monopolies that risk becoming more concerned with controlling the internet than innovating it.   They become so large that as companies they take on the role of not just players but who are instead taking control and altering the common ground that we all play on which is the internet itself, the carriage for so much of our day to day information.  

Tim Wu coined the phrase 'net neutrality' to explain what we he thinks we want to avoid and you can get a succinct definition of what he means here However it would be wrong to assume that the Internet and technology giants we know today are acting as a shadowy group, who like a Bond film are intent on taking over the Internet.  This may or may not be the unintended consequence of there dominance, only time will tell.  We as consumers are complicit in this process, why?  well we like the convenience of what Google and Facebook offer up as their version of the Internet. Take Facebook and for anyone who has seen the Social Network (2010) arose in a blaze of innovation that collated existing ideas but just delivered a better version of those ideas much as Bell did a century or so before with telephony.  As consumers we accept the limitations offered by these services in exchange for convenience.  The Facebook experience delivers up a version of the Internet that is not that different to a large hamburger and fries at the end of a drunken night. Basically it does the job and its a forgettable experience  but we do it again, log on, like page and when it asks in an Orwellian fashion 'what's on your mind' we sometimes let the cat out of the bag with our answers.  Fair enough this is a harsh and sometimes cliched characterisation of Facebook especially as it is often appended with the word 'revolution' when we talk of places such as Tunisia and Egypt.  That the Internet is utilised to a lesser or greater extent for political purposes and has generated varied opinion of which two poles are that of Morozov (The Net Delusion) and Shirky (Here Comes Everybody)

However the fact that it is used for political purposes in some cases makes it incumbent that the Internet remains open. That is the Internet as a carriage should remain open to all and priority not given to those who can pay that bit extra or who exert undue influence.  Indeed  governments who embrace the Internet giants lightly for now but who knows how tight in the future?  If the Internet giants like those before, film studios, newspapers and the automobile industry can help governments they will and often in a benign way that benefits us all.  However what the emerging monopolies fear most is regulation that would loosen their dominance over what is becoming the dominant information network of our time. How can we be sure that  monopolies are forming and to characterture the clairvoyant 'give us a sign'.  One sign Tim Wu cites is a lack of innovation with companies delivering up much the same product that has delivered so much riches to their coffers.   Google is an interesting case that seems to be guarding against this faith as it emerges as a dominant force, who reading has not used their products, not many I would wager.  An example from Google was Wave and yes it  ultimately failed but demonstrated a desire to move  beyond the status quo with an innovative product that consumers ultimately rejected.  Perhaps consumers are happy with the convenience that existing services offer or Wave was just a crap product, I of course thought the opposite .

The path is by no means set and the Internet will not necessarily follow the same path as was trodden in a 20th century that witnessed the emergence and subsequent breaking up of monopolies.  The open source movement is just one example that could in time act as a counter weight to the products that flow from the Internet and technology giants. By its very design the Internet maybe beyond control by one or a minority of the big players.  Let us hope so because if monopolies  gain control over what is termed the 'carriage' that in turn affects our ability to put freely our own information onto the Internet and have it treated no differently from others then this will have consequences in the future.  Of course the question then arises who owns that information?  so many questions and some of the answers might be over at Quora.  Innovation is far from dead.