Net Neutrality

[RiverNotch]

America invented the internet Leanne.

America was the birthplace of Jesus too.

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The direct precursor to the Internet, ARPANET, was invented by the Americans for *something something national defense that I couldn't care less about*. They did receive some assistance from the Brits, and they did take a few ideas from the continentals, but seeing as how most of the people who first worked on both it and its descendants were Americans, and the first computers linked up to it were American... (source: Wikipedia, as well as a couple of books I read a few years ago whose titles I forgot)

Net neutrality basically means that your service provider can't charge you for more, or can't slow down your connection, whenever you connect to sites they don't approve of. So the repeal of these provisions means that your connection may very well get slowed down if you connect to the Silk Road (good), Pornhub (your mileage may vary), or, if your service provider is a competitor, flippin' Google (very, very bad). I mean, sure, the Internet exists in large part to enforce the American cultural hegemony, and a lot of its sites are either by Americans or handled by Americans, but I would argue that, since the Internet as it is now gives the user freedom to pursue paths other than American, since many of these American service providers are so far constrained enough that they cannot easily give in to their biases for American content, and since plenty of the overall benefits of the Internet are more or less unrelated to this cultural hegemony (for example, how me and my friends have far easier access to research journals for our various courses; how I've absorbed a poop ton of international films, music, and poetry I wouldn't have had access to without the internet because the bookstores and record stores here have a painfully limited selection; or how far less privileged folk have gotten their voices heard, their businesses started, or their science projects pushed forward because of the internet), the Internet as it is with net neutrality isn't nearly as biased as you think it is, at the very least in the countries where you or I live -- ie, not China, not Russia, not many of the Arab states, (if you're particularly kinky, I suppose not Europe?), and soon enough not the United States. I guess the biggest testament to that is how this site is operated: probably based on American technology, but handled by a Brit that as far as I know lives in the Philippines, and frequented by people from all over the world.

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My biggest fear with all of this is for my American friends finding it harder to fool around, or the American content providers I enjoy having a much harder time than usual ---- but otherwise, I'm kinda ambivalent about this, if only because I feel like I shouldn't be so invested in American affairs.

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CRUCIAL ADDENDUM: although yeah, the internet pre-arpanet was conceptualized mainly by Brits, and the internet post-arpanet was kickstarted by folks down in Europe, and by the 80s and 90s there were versions of the internet per continent, with developing countries and developed countries duly separated, until by the 90s everyone was connected -- it could be argued that the internet in its invention is an international affair, but with the sheer amount of distinctly American innovations, or perhaps because it was the Americans who had the infrastructure or political will or whatever to properly apply whatever innovations other countries had conceptualized, or even perhaps because much of the early work on the internet by Americans was sponsored by their government, while the involvement of other nations (as far as I can tell) had less governmental involvement, it would be much easier to argue that the Americans invented much of it.