Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Its my internet. I'll go where I want to.

In Winner's reading "Do artifacts have Politics?" he brings up the idea, in relation to the creation of technology, as having inherent political relation. While I don't dismiss the idea of technology being created to benefit some people more that others I don't think its completely inherent.

For example, not everyone will go out and run to get the latest iPhone just because it is the newest fastest model. Many Existing iPhone owners will be satisfied with their older model and won't have to be forced in the purchasing a more expensive version of what they already have. That is our choice as a consumer. If I enjoy using Google I’ll stick with it no matter how groundbreaking Bing is. This is a point that Wu brings up in his article “Why you should care about network neutrality.”

The article brings up the controversy that is going on surrounding net neutrality and how ISPs are trying to follow the path of cable television. It seems like the issue is not being solved because today the federal appeals court ruled in favor of the FCC not being able to regulate Net Neutrality.

http://news.cnet.com/the-iconoclast/?tag=rb_content;overviewHead

While it seems logical that these ISPs need to make profit somehow, and making a deal with certain companies to be at the forefront of their service it seems wrong and unethical to us the consumer. The World Wide Web is comparable to the encyclopedia and should not be controlled by the library or ISP in this case. This issue feels like the consumer is being cheated as nowhere in the contract does it say that the ISP can have control on where or how the consumer chooses to access content on the Internet. It is a violation and going in the direction of authoritarian. As a consumer it is in our best interest to monitor the happenings of net neutrality because it can end up more freedom and money than we ever thought.

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