The theology of net neutrality

This past semester I advised a student on an independent project concerning net neutrality. This was maybe not the best arrangement for the student, since I didn't really know all that much about net neutrality (we don't have a new media currently on the faculty, which is why I had to do). It was great for me, though, as it allowed me to learn a little more about a subject that seems to be generating a great deal of discussion and debate recently.

For whose unfamiliar with the phrase, net neutrality refers to a policy proposal that would forbid internet providers to charge different rates to different customers. The providers want to do this based on the reasonable market principle that some people or companies (Google, ABC news, Youtube) use a lot more bandwidth than others (ie., me). It just makes sense, so goes this reasoning, to charge the former a higher rate than the latter. But defenders of the status quo argue that this sort of pricing policy would lead to tiered service--so that some users, like wealthy and large corporations--would be able to buy extra-speedy access, while the rest of us would be left with a more slower and degraded system. They argue that the government should step in and ensure that providers can't differentiate service between haves and have-nots. Network neutrality proposals would also ensure that providers couldn't use their control over service to block ideas, or sites, or content that they don't like.

To anyone of my political persuasion, net neutrality seems like a no-brainer. Of course you want to keep the internet free of censorship, whether by governments or corporations. Of course you want to keep access to, and transmission of, information on the internet as equal as possible. It is one of the major selling points of new media culture that it more closely resembles a truly democratic public sphere than anything we've had for a long time, maybe ever. Opponents of net neutrality must be either crazy, then, or in the pay of the only people who would appear to profit from a hierarchical net: internet providers and maybe, other large corporations. That's the sort of attitude that the folks at the Daily Show are taking here.

It's one thing to point out that one's opponent's views are colored by the economic interests, and also maybe certain social contexts that make them blind to some aspects of a problem. That is only to observe that they are human. It's another thing to use that observation to excuse oneself from the necessity of having to engage in those arguments. One of the things I found out in the course of looking into the debate a little more closely is that the opponents of net neutrality can't simply be dismissed as dupes of neo-liberal orthodoxy or Big Media lackeys. There are some good arguments against the government creating the sort of regime that net neutrality proponents support. First, many NN opponents point out that when governments involve themselves in regulating markets, they introduce biases that stifle competition, hamper innovation, create massive and often highly ineffective government bureaucracies, and ultimately work against consumers and precisely those market outsiders that otherwise would have challenged the powers of entrenched interests. Significantly, this is what happened in the nineteenth century, say NN opponents, when government intervened in the railroads because of very similar worries to what neutrality advocates are worrying about now. Then too, the opponents point out, given the rapid and dramatic changes in new media culture over the past twenty years, any potential regulatory regime might be addressing a world that now longer exists by the time that it will be implemented. Remember when the danger seemed to be that Microsoft was going to take over the world? And then it was AOL-Time Warner? And then Google? And now Facebook? There is a reasonable worry that by creating a set of rules designed for a specific media environment, the government locks us into that environment, and the sort of dynamic culture that we've seen through new media will calcify. Moreover, given that things seem to be changing so radically, and so unpredictably, whose to say that the dangers of the current media world won't be solved by a simple shift in direction or emphasis, or simply the introduction of new technologies?

But then here's the thing. For every piece of history that the opponents of NN can pull up, defenders of the idea have a corresponding example of how monopolies or oligopolistic situations create market failure. Or they interpret the lessons of the past in a different light. Their historical lessons also seem pretty plausible. And because it is so difficult, or impossible, to predict what we are going to see in the next decade, even the next several years, its really a matter of faith as to which side you are going to believe. If you go into this debate suspicious of modern corporate capitalism, then the faith in technology and the market to solve any and all problems seems naive, at best. If you approach it with a distrust of government intervention, then the desire to create legislation to address that problem that does not even seem to exist, at this point, can feel like just another example of the left trying to control the creative forces of humanity. It is this clash of theological positions--belief in the goodness of the market on the one side, and belief in its ultimate destructive nature on the other--that makes the debate so unedifying. People are predicting futures that they don't really have much of a handle on, and they use past events simply as ideological justification for their position (notably, there are few if any historians involved in the argument, from what I can tell. That's probably because most historians, of whatever political persuasion, realize that whatever its value, history makes for a poor predictive device.)

All of which would just be another example of intellectual follies if not for the fact that this decision--either for or against net neutrality--probably will have a fairly major impact on our culture. And it is very possible that one of the two sides is correct: we could end up stifling one of the great instances of communal creative energy in modern history, either through action or inaction. And there does not seem to be a way for us to reliably and reasonably justify which path to take, at least not based on any clear empirical evidence.