Having mulled over my thoughts from yesterday, and the concepts of freedom that the Magna Carta represents, I’ve decided to take a look at Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality stands as a way of treating all online traffic, without discrimination based on end user, website or location. Although it’s a hotly debated topic, I firmly stand for Net Neutrality and what it represents. The concept of an open internet is extremely exciting, with a lack of online censorship, more transparency and open web standards. In the United States, large corporations such as Time Warner and Comcast are infamous for the monopolies they hold over large areas of land, asserting themselves as the only option for many residents who need to connect to the internet. These companies come under a lot of flack for these monopolies, and are well-known for recurring incidents of extremely poor customer service. Finally, they regularly push lobbying efforts in the American political systems to continue their monopolies, prevent efforts to improve the efficiency and cost of connecting to the internet and in some cases push for censorship and online policing.
It’s worrying to think of the future of online activities if a company such as Comcast managed to spread their agenda world-wide. This is why I strongly believe in an open, neutral internet. At a base level, it should be a human right to access the internet and the wealth of information that is stored there. To openly and actively try to fight against such a philosophy is baffling to me.
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I’m wondering if there’s perhaps something I could do that would represent the consequence of failing to achieve net neutrality, such as creating a project that involves some sort of delay in its feedback to the user, as a way of representing slow internet speeds; or censoring something so that the user can’t see/interact with it, even if they want to.
I might be able to take the idea behind a “glow wall” and develop that into something more.
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I had an idea for a USB stick that contains an executable that, once run, will simulate a non-neutral internet browsing experience including slow speeds and censorship. While the coding will be beyond my abilities, I think it’s an interesting idea worth looking into.