[Chapter-delegates] VIDEO: Geoff Huston on the future directions of the Internet

[Brandt Dainow]

Whether “it is a bad thing” depends on your position on monopoly control by profit-oriented organisations of markets and critical infrastructures.  Under free market capitalism, the health of a sector, and innovation in technology, is dependant on competition.  So under a free market capitalist position, monopoly control is a bad thing.  Under Marxism, monopoly control leads to domination, coercion, exploitation and alienation.  So under Marxism, monopoly control is a bad thing.  Under fascism, the anarchistic nature of humanity demands leadership by a single person’s will, so monopoly control enables those leaders who know better that the ordinary person to impose their will on everyone.  So under fascism, this situation is a good thing.  There may be other, non-fascist, justifications for monopoly control, but I cannot think of any.

 

As to – “if it is a bad thing, what do we do about it?” – this question continually occurs in many industry sectors, as businesses have a tendency to consolidate, with the bigger absorbing the smaller, leading to monopoly situations.  The solution, as far as I am aware, is always some form of state-based enforcement of competition, such as requiring permission to merge companies, or the state enforcing multiple providers for a given service, or other forms of legislation.  The general public, and voluntary organisations, tend not to have the power to force large companies to do anything, leaving government as the only other force in the market strong enough to limit them.

 

Regards,

Brandt Dainow

brandt.dainow at gmail.com

 

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Brandt_Dainow

http://www.imediaconnection.com/profiles/brandt.dainow

 

From: Chapter-delegates [mailto:chapter-delegates-bounces at elists.isoc.org] On Behalf Of Gihan Dias
Sent: 19 March 2017 07:38
To: chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] VIDEO: Geoff Huston on the future directions of the Internet

 

On 17/03/2017 15:50, Joly MacFie wrote:

Geoff Huston, Chief Scientist at APNIC, gave a rather dystopian view of the Internet's future, referring to the current period as a " <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age> gilded age" - a late 19th century trope, coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, that described the rise of an oligarchic veneer that masked underlying social malaise. What provokes Huston is after the Internet disrupted  the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), it is now in danger of being disrupted itself. The rise consolidation of ubiquitous major Content Delivery Network nodes connected via private networks, is 1) belaying the need for, and thus investment in, global Open Internet infrastructure, and also 2) removing all options for public oversight of these networks.

I think the situation is not as bad as Geoff paints, but it *is* getting controlled by a few players and could get more so.

The question is: "So is it a bad thing?" and "If so what do we do about it"?

Gihan

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