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Someone Who Is Backing Away From The Online Experience After 24 Years Of Involvement
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Walt In Seattle
Nov 25, 2017, 10:45:03 PM11/25/17
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I'm leaving. But, before I do, I have something to say about Net Neutrality.
It would have been and could have been the great equalizer as to the INTERNT for those who surf it or those who provide content. It would assure the corporate Fat Cats may not monopolize the INTERNET. But Net Neutrality will soon die and so too will much of my participation.
There are, of course, some things I'll have to do on the INTERNET because some things simply can't be done another way or EASILY done another way. Thus, pragmatism keeps me from walking away entirely. But I don't want to be in the middle of what may turn out to be the re-engineering of the INTERNET and its likely social impact. I'll now offer to you my vision of what's to come after the FCC votes to reject Net Neutrality.
When the vote is over, the litigation will begin. But Net Neutrality has not been warmly embraced by those who have intended to dominate markets facilitated by the INTERNET. THEY have the legal talent, the time and the resources -- including money -- to ensure Net Neutrality will never again threaten their notions of what the INTERNET should be, a place that benefits their business model or bottom line first and foremost. Over the next several years, appointment of federal judges friendly to President Trump's oligarchic big business agendas will bake in the concept of an INTERNET absent Net Neurtality.
Without neutrality, big business will absolutely own and control the INTERNET. The priorities and perspective of big business will rule the INTENET. Corporate giants will use the INTERNET to socially/psychologically engineer future customers -- how they think and what they do which they never did before -- just as Facebook and Amazon have already done but on a grander scale.
The rich diversity of opinion, perspective and cultural blending that exists today will gradually disappear and we'll almost all be what big corporations want us to be. Molded by a well-developed practice of consumer psychology far more sophisticated than what exists for the purpose of manipulating people today, we'll be like the Borg in Star Trek.
It all begins with a push to eliminate content providers operating on a small scale who attempt to maintain their independence. They, of course, will not stand a chance. Ergo, people who want to put up websites and provide content on BLOGs will soon enough find they can't unless what they do is tied to and controlled by large corporations who shall dominate the INTERNET. And then comes the battle of the Titans to narrow the number of corporate entities controlling the INTERNET. In a couple of decades, the INTERNET will be controlled by a small group of corporate entities having a common goal or set of goals.
When it starts, the issue will be control over traffic or data flow and those who can pay for unrestricted flow or better flow than most others will be well-positioned as top competitors in e-commerce.
Don't be fooled! The debate over paying your way -- byte-for-byte -- while being penalized if you don't is a smokescreen dispensed by large corporations resting on false assumptions about whether people or organizations pay their fair share. People wanting to remain independent as they provide information that's not designed to generate a profit will find their BLOGs and websites are dropping like flies unless tied to a healthy/competitive corporate host. Over time, BLOGs will be less and less about helping people or expressing personal opinions and more about helping a corporate host make money. This is what it's all about, not the false issue of data flow. In fact, many BLOGs, websites, online social venues and etc. will have to pay to maintain their existence and therefore shall have to seek corporate sponsorship. Sponsorship will not occur unless these sites operate under the rules or guidelines put forward by their sponsor. Of course, it will be necessary to hype the products of the sponsor as well. Amd so it shall go.
I choose not to be present for this massacre of diversity and assassination of independence.
Good-bye.
It would have been and could have been the great equalizer as to the INTERNT for those who surf it or those who provide content. It would assure the corporate Fat Cats may not monopolize the INTERNET. But Net Neutrality will soon die and so too will much of my participation.
There are, of course, some things I'll have to do on the INTERNET because some things simply can't be done another way or EASILY done another way. Thus, pragmatism keeps me from walking away entirely. But I don't want to be in the middle of what may turn out to be the re-engineering of the INTERNET and its likely social impact. I'll now offer to you my vision of what's to come after the FCC votes to reject Net Neutrality.
When the vote is over, the litigation will begin. But Net Neutrality has not been warmly embraced by those who have intended to dominate markets facilitated by the INTERNET. THEY have the legal talent, the time and the resources -- including money -- to ensure Net Neutrality will never again threaten their notions of what the INTERNET should be, a place that benefits their business model or bottom line first and foremost. Over the next several years, appointment of federal judges friendly to President Trump's oligarchic big business agendas will bake in the concept of an INTERNET absent Net Neurtality.
Without neutrality, big business will absolutely own and control the INTERNET. The priorities and perspective of big business will rule the INTENET. Corporate giants will use the INTERNET to socially/psychologically engineer future customers -- how they think and what they do which they never did before -- just as Facebook and Amazon have already done but on a grander scale.
The rich diversity of opinion, perspective and cultural blending that exists today will gradually disappear and we'll almost all be what big corporations want us to be. Molded by a well-developed practice of consumer psychology far more sophisticated than what exists for the purpose of manipulating people today, we'll be like the Borg in Star Trek.
It all begins with a push to eliminate content providers operating on a small scale who attempt to maintain their independence. They, of course, will not stand a chance. Ergo, people who want to put up websites and provide content on BLOGs will soon enough find they can't unless what they do is tied to and controlled by large corporations who shall dominate the INTERNET. And then comes the battle of the Titans to narrow the number of corporate entities controlling the INTERNET. In a couple of decades, the INTERNET will be controlled by a small group of corporate entities having a common goal or set of goals.
When it starts, the issue will be control over traffic or data flow and those who can pay for unrestricted flow or better flow than most others will be well-positioned as top competitors in e-commerce.
Don't be fooled! The debate over paying your way -- byte-for-byte -- while being penalized if you don't is a smokescreen dispensed by large corporations resting on false assumptions about whether people or organizations pay their fair share. People wanting to remain independent as they provide information that's not designed to generate a profit will find their BLOGs and websites are dropping like flies unless tied to a healthy/competitive corporate host. Over time, BLOGs will be less and less about helping people or expressing personal opinions and more about helping a corporate host make money. This is what it's all about, not the false issue of data flow. In fact, many BLOGs, websites, online social venues and etc. will have to pay to maintain their existence and therefore shall have to seek corporate sponsorship. Sponsorship will not occur unless these sites operate under the rules or guidelines put forward by their sponsor. Of course, it will be necessary to hype the products of the sponsor as well. Amd so it shall go.
I choose not to be present for this massacre of diversity and assassination of independence.
Good-bye.
Walt In Seattle
Dec 5, 2017, 10:42:45 AM12/5/17
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wolverine
Dec 5, 2017, 11:29:35 AM12/5/17
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wolverine
Dec 5, 2017, 1:09:10 PM12/5/17
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On Tuesday, December 5, 2017 at 9:42:45 AM UTC-6, Walt In Seattle wrote:
Walt In Seattle
Dec 13, 2017, 11:26:59 AM12/13/17
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The FCC's vote happens on Thursday, December 14, 2017. If it goes as expected, it will go against the wishes of most interested people in the U.S. That's when I'll opt out of most services available on the INTERNET, particularly the mainstream functions of discussion forums like this one. Online expression of a wide variety of opinions or perspectives, free of censorship, requires, among other conditions, a forum offered by those who are not themselves attempting to control, for a commercial or self-serving purpose, what people do and think or are not acting, willingly or otherwise, as a proxy for such entities/interests.
There is, of course, no perfect environment for expression, and bias is never absent from the administration of any online service. Yet, as noted above, the reversal of Net Neutrality rules will begin a process under which the INTENET eventually will be something far less useful than today for those who value and need places to express themselves. If the FCC votes to reverse rules on Net Neutrality on Thurday, I won't be here on Friday to post anything except my oppostion to that vote. If and after Net Neutrality is fully litigated with the result that it is forever abandoned, I won't bother to post in places like this because I'll know what's coming.
http://fortune.com/2017/12/13/fcc-net-neutrality-vote-survey/
Mr. B1ack
Dec 14, 2017, 2:21:03 AM12/14/17
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Walt ... I'f you're gonna leave then just LEAVE.
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