Suppression of the Internet

Annalee Newitz, AlterNet

Back in the wacky Clinton days, politicians used to call the Internet the "information superhighway." Obviously the idea was to deploy a metaphor that would explain to suburbanites - who, after all, spent a great deal of time idling in traffic on highways - the purpose of a global computer network whose true nature seemed impossible to understand. But as we plunge more deeply into the 21st century, we don't need to limp along on lame analogies anymore. These days, the Internet is just the Internet.

As stupid as the superhighway metaphor was, one thing about it was spot-on. Like good roads, the Internet is now crucial to public life. Roads give people access to cities and jobs; the Internet allows people to work together and communicate over vast distances. Over the past century, most countries came to treat roads as a public good, paid for by the government, because giving citizens access to easy transportation built the wealth of the state. Even in countries like the United States, where health care is still barbarically privatized, the roads are free to all.

Not so with the Internet. In fact, even when people try to make the Internet more accessible to all, they're stymied by freaky antilogic among politicians. Late in May, a member of Congress from Texas named Pete Sessions proposed a bill called the Preserving Innovation in Telecom Act, which would prevent municipal governments from offering people free or low-cost Internet service. Why would an elected official want to bar cities from giving their residents quick and easy access to the Internet?

That's easy: Sessions used to work for SBC, a telecom company that could lose a little business if cities started setting up local WiFi networks or Internet kiosks. I guess his old buddies in the network biz are more valuable to him than his constituents. It's sort of like a former contractor trying to ban government-sponsored road building in cities because asphalt companies might lose out. In the end, nobody can drive to work anymore.

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