[ih] The web as wind and whirlwind? (was Re: History from 1960s to 2025)

[Greg Skinner]

On Dec 18, 2025, at 12:16 PM, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> Yes. Up-levelling a bit, unregulated markets always lead to monopolies or
> cartels unless there is effective anti-trust regulation. The Internet has
> always been an unregulated market -- originally because no politicians
> or regulators even knew it existed, and later because they had no idea
> how it worked and in particular how it simply ignored international
> boundaries. So we ended up with near-monopolies both in the plumbing
> (the "Tier 1" carriers, CDNs, the namespace, cloud hosting, etc.) and
> in the fluff (search engines, on-line markets, social media, etc.).
> 
> Here's a counterfactual question: what would have happened if the
> whole Clinton/Gore/Magaziner commercialization project had never
> taken place?
> 
> Regards/Ngā mihi
>   Brian Carpenter

Hmmm …

At least as far as the US is concerned, politicians knew that it existed.  For example, there were US Congress hearings about NSFNET. [1] Also, when concerns about anticompetitive behavior arose, politicians got involved again. [2]

--gregbo

[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=yLLuZ61d9xAC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=nsfnet&f=false
[2] https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED350986.pdf