Happy Birthday Internet! Today You Turn…5?
Break out the cake and the streamers… the Internet turns 35 today! As a recent Associated Press story noted, it was on Sept. 2, 1969 that computer scientists experimented using a direct cable connection for computers to exchange data. The rest—such as email, the World Wide Web and the domain naming system—is history.
Turning 35 is indeed a significant event. As clichéd as it sounds, this milestone encourages people to consider not only where they have been, but where they are headed. The Internet, however, is not quite human—just like a dog, it does not age in “people years.” Unlike dogs, however, determining the true age of the Internet requires dividing (not multiplying) its “human age” by seven. The Internet, therefore, is more like an awkward toddler on a tricycle than a mid-thirties professional in a BMW.
As the Internet matures, it must endure some growing pains—one of which is how to deal with spam. Unsolicited emails, says the Radicati Group, a technology marketing research firm, costs each Internet user the equivalent of $50 per year. A recent article in InfoWorld stated that this figure could quadruple. Some pundits claim that technology created in the private sector will provide a solution to the spam menace. Others say that governments need to get involved.
A similar divide exists when you look at other controversial aspects of the web, such as the way it is used to spread pornography and hate literature—or its current difficulties in accommodating languages other than English. Some countries even want the United Nations to have authority over some aspects of the ‘Net—contending that the technology is a kind of global public utility.
And although the Internet is barely out of infancy, it is quickly being burdened with grown up responsibilities. Governments like China, Cuba, France and India want certain web content censored. Law enforcement wants to be able to sniff IP communications and wants private enterprise to design a Gestapo-like hook into all new networks. Consumer “activists” insist there is a “digital divide” and that internet access is an entitlement that should be included within our country’s misguided and mismanaged “universal service” subsidy program.
In an era when you must be 18 to vote and serve in the military, 21 to drink without a fake ID, and 25 to rent a car without being surcharged, 35 years may seem all grown up. But the Internet is just beginning to hit stride so proposals for resolving governance or security issues—or providing access to the underserved—must be judged at least in part according to the degree they will allow the Internet’s dynamism to persist.
Government regulators often decide that an industry is “mature” and then saddle it with legal obligations akin to a public utility. But we should not freeze the Internet, or slow its growth, to censor speech, spy on the citizenry, stop child porn or hinder other bad activities that occur with any enabling technology. After all, don’t we want the Internet to grow up, go to college, and most importantly, move out of the house?
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