Net Neutrality

[ralis]

More corporate greed and control!!

 

We’re About to Lose Net Neutrality — And the Internet as We Know It

 

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/11/so-the-internets-about-to-lose-its-net-neutrality/

Edited November 5, 2013 by ralis

[Brian]

Have no fear - I'm confident the increasingly oppressive authoritarian state won't give up so easily. It's a lynchpin in the plans for global consolidation of control and it's all for the good of "the little people," after all.

[thelerner]

I'm keeping my eye on it, but at the moment I'm not too worried. The article talks about ATT in 2005. If ATT did (& they didn't) people would vote with there pocket books and go to another server. I don't see anything in it about imminent shut down, control grab or filtering. Actually it talks about coalitions getting together and successfully fighting it.

[Brian]

It's a manufactured crisis intended to incite hostility towards "evil rich corporations" whereby the bureaucracy can extend its own control. Not an R vs. D thing or an Obama vs. Bush thing, you see. It is a "federal leviathan" thing...

[zerostao]

now, i am confused, isnt the bureaucracy and the evil rich corporations one in the same?

where i live they are

[Brian]

To a large extent, they are. Corporatism is that fusion. Corporations are composed of many individuals, however (as are bureaucracies), and sometimes they don't go along with "the plan."

 

Ever read Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle? One of the themes was the establishment of a kabuki conflict (between an oppressive government and an enlightened religious leader, in that case) in order to flare passions and create a polarization but the dictator and the prophet were, in fact, partners driving the population towards their own objectives.

 

In the current case, the corporations were supposed to play the role of "oppressive soul-eating capitalists" and the beneficent government was going to ride in on a white horse to save the Internet for "the people" -- and take control of it in the process. Some of the telecommunications companies didn't run their routes properly this time, though, so they'll return to the huddle and draw up a new play.

Edited November 6, 2013 by Brian

[zerostao]

i didnt read that book, it sounds exceptional tho.

i did read the recent news of "the corporations were supposed to play the role of "oppressive soul-eating capitalists"

where apple (corporation) workers are dealing with work conditions so intolerable that apple had to install 'suicide nets'

literally to catch employess who were trying to jump to their doom rather than continue to live work under such conditions. apple is very thoughful to provide these nets to save the lives of people make sure they keep their workers on the job.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2092277/Apple-Poor-working-conditions-inside-Chinese-factories-making-iPads.html

[Brian]

Yes, who we are and the roles we play often reflect one another, don't they?

 

Remember that really powerful Apple commercial from the 1984 Super Bowl? The one in which they were helping to save humanity from slavery by introducing the Macintosh? Kinda ironic, huh? The anti-establishment corporation becomes a poster-child for the problem...

 

[Brian]

Oh! And, yeah. Cat's Cradle isn't long but it is one of the most delicious bits of existentialism I've ever found. It works on many levels and resonates as strongly today as it must have when it was written in 1963 or as it did when I first read it in the early 80s. I highly recommend it!

[xor]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24486684

 

same manufacturer

[thelerner]

i didnt read that book, it sounds exceptional tho.

i did read the recent news of "the corporations were supposed to play the role of "oppressive soul-eating capitalists"

where apple (corporation) workers are dealing with work conditions so intolerable that apple had to install 'suicide nets'

literally to catch employess who were trying to jump to their doom rather than continue to live work under such conditions. apple is very thoughful to provide these nets to save the lives of people make sure they keep their workers on the job.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2092277/Apple-Poor-working-conditions-inside-Chinese-factories-making-iPads.html

It's horrible, but if you dig down, that was 17 suicides in 5 years from a pool of one million workers. American college kids have 4 times that suicide rate. There is an excellent article by Wired that looks a little more closely into what is actually happening there. A journalist trying to find truth beyond sensationalist headlines.

 

Here is a link: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/02/ff_joelinchina/

 

Here is an excerpt:

"...I seem to be witnessing some of those damage-control efforts on this still-warm fall day as two Foxconn executives—along with a liaison from Burson-Marsteller, a PR firm hired to deal with the post-suicide outcry—lead me through the facility. I have spent much of my career blogging about gadgets on sites like Boing Boing Gadgets and Gizmodo, reviewing and often praising many of the products that were made right here at Foxconn’s Shenzhen factory. I ignored the first Foxconn suicides as sad but statistically inevitable. But as the number of jumpers approached double digits, latent self-reproach began to boil over. Out of a million people, 17 suicides isn’t much—indeed, American college students kill themselves at four times that rate.

 

Still, after years of writing what is (at best) buyers’ guidance and (at worst) marching hymns for an army of consumers, I was burdened by what felt like an outsize provision of guilt—an existential buyer’s remorse for civilization itself. I am here because I want to know: Did my iPhone kill 17 people?

 

My hosts are eager to help me answer that question in the negative by pointing out how pleasant life in the factory can be. They are quick with the college analogies: The canteens and mess halls are “like a college food court.” The living quarters, where up to eight workers share rooms about the size of a two-car garage, are “like college dorms.” The avenues and boulevards in the less industrial parts of the campus are “like malls.”

 

For all their defensiveness, my guides are not far off the mark. The avenues certainly look more like a college campus than the dingy design-by-Communism concrete canyons I half expected to find. Sure, everything on the Foxconn campus is a bit shabby—errant woody saplings creep out of sidewalk cracks, and the signage is sometimes rusty or faded—more community college than Ivy League, perhaps. But it’s generally clean."

 

Its a good article and I recommend reading it all. My point is you need to dig to understand and get to the truth. Not that this article is a definitive assessment, but it seems written by a man who goes there to dig up the truth. Too often its a single sensational view that bounces around the media without context by people who are basing all the facts on a single source. If the initial story confirms a bias then its all to easy to dig no further and keep it one sided.

Edited November 7, 2013 by thelerner