Today I'm on home territory, the
information technologies, returning to it from ground on which I had no right
to tread: cosmology, religion, history, psychology, poetry and philosophy. That might be a relief to all.
I
entered my home territory as a pre-teenager nearly seventy years ago, starting by building radios and phonographs from vacuum tubes, later building a ham radio
station and communicating with other radio amateurs around the world by Morse
code at 10-20 words per minute.
That's perhaps 5-10 bits per second, and I was thrilled to achieve that
speed. Now I am discontent with
speeds of less than 3 megabits per
second. When a gigabit per second
is available, enough to download a full-length, high-definition movie in a few
seconds, will that be enough? Who
knows? I am surprised that I now need more than 3 Mbps. It is wondrous how much the Internet revolution has changed
our expectations.
These
personal musings about the speed the Internet has injected into our lives might
be expanded in another posting.
(Can our brains handle it?)
Today I'd like to comment on an aspect of the information industry that the Internet has so far not changed: the fraught relationship between content and
distribution, even on the Internet itself. Succinctly put, information
distributors always try to control the content they distribute; providers of
content always try to control its distribution. One usually wins.
Will the Internet change that too?
In
2010, Tim Wu wrote an
excellent book covering the topic: The
Master Switch. As his subtitle The Rise and Fall of
Information Empires suggests, Wu describes
a persistent cycle that has affected a succession of information industries in
America: telegraphy, telephony, movies, radio, television and cable. A critical part of every cycle has been the
establishment of a closed system: a monopoly or oligopoly having control of
both content and distribution, to the detriment of the public interest. Here are three examples:
•
Western Union was by 1870 one of the world's largest corporations, having a
monopoly over telegraphy in the U.S.
By limiting access to its lines, it was able to wield unconscionable
power over content. For instance,
it allowed access for news reports only to the Associated Press, at the time
the main source for non-local news for many newspapers. Both Western Union and the AP were
allied with the Republican Party.
In the 1876 presidential election between the Republican Hayes and the
Democrat Tilden, the AP telegraphically distributed only favorable stories
about Hayes and unfavorable stories about Tilden. This collusion likely tilted
the very close election to Hayes.
Here the public lost the integrity of its political system.
•
By 1913, AT&T had acquired scores of local telephone companies and then its
largest competitor, Western Union.
In an anti-trust settlement that year, it agreed to divest itself of
Western Union; stay out of the telegraph business; and submit to regulation as
a common carrier of telephony, giving equal access to all, including access to its long lines to the remaining independent telcos. In exchange, with the blessing of the
government, AT&T grew to be virtually the sole provider of telephone
service in the U.S.; it was widely touted as a benevolent monopoly. For the next seventy years it indeed
provided superb service and technical improvements. Yet it consistently suppressed "disruptive
technologies" that could have provided content other than voice to the network. Technologies invented in its own famed
Bell Laboratories never saw daylight, like a facsimile machine (which might
replace lengthy conversations with shorter faxes) and digital subscriber lines
(which might replace voice with faster computer communication). Similar technologies invented
externally could not on "technical grounds" gain access to AT&T's
lines. Here the public
significantly lost by delays in the advent of new technologies that would have
allowed use of the only national network for content other than voice.
•
By the first decade of the twentieth century, the motion-picture industry
contained hundreds of small producers.
This maelstrom had mostly coalesced by 1920 into an oligopoly of five
Hollywood studios: Universal, MGM, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Bros. and
Paramount. The only barriers to a
completely closed system were the myriad independent distributors and
theater owners who refused to relinquish their ability to screen just the
movies and stars they wanted from whatever producer, inside the oligopoly or
not. So the studios in the 1920s
conducted a blitzkrieg of pressure tactics and purchases, which ended in the
elimination of virtually all these independents. The film business was now completely vertically integrated;
if one wanted to produce, distribute or screen a movie, it was pretty much
through one of the studios or not at all.
Here, the public's loss was a substantial curtailment of the type and
content of movies it could see.
These
three cycles all came to a close, the first by technical obsolescence, the
second by regulatory action, the third by court decision. But cycles persist in other venues,
even if not as egregiously. Cable TV distributors have a hammerlock on pricey packages of video channels they offer their customers, often in monopoly markets; there are frequent outbreaks of warfare between these distributors and their content providers, with blackouts both threatened and occurring. Television networks have increasingly combined with Hollywood studios in exclusive content-distribution packages. Cellular telephone is almost a duopoly of AT&T and Verizon, each trying to limit the amounts of information that can be downloaded or uploaded, and proposing "fast lanes" for those willing to pay more. In all of these venues, consumer choice is constrained.
On the Internet, however, the user is still largely in control. The interaction between content and distribution is unresolved. The first major attempt at their fusion, the merger of AOL (distribution) and Time Warner (content), was a spectacular failure. Neither company understood the nature of the Internet, whose very design gives the user unprecedented power to choose both distributors and content providers.
On the Internet, however, the user is still largely in control. The interaction between content and distribution is unresolved. The first major attempt at their fusion, the merger of AOL (distribution) and Time Warner (content), was a spectacular failure. Neither company understood the nature of the Internet, whose very design gives the user unprecedented power to choose both distributors and content providers.
The
failure of this merger by no means ended the story. Wu points to three very powerful forces still at work in the
Internet:
•
The pursuit of a closed-system model, not unlike that of the old AT&T. It is typified by Apple, which says to
the user, "Come to us! We
will provide you with an integrated system of hardware, software, applications,
movies, books, music--whatever we think you want, but let us be the judge of what you want and how you get
it. We promise that you will be
stunned by the orderly beauty and efficiency of our system." Apple's control of content is
exemplified by its refusal to carry books, video, music and apps except on its
own terms, to the chagrin of many content providers.
•
The pursuit of an open-system model, not unlike that of very early
movie-industry days. It is
typified by Google/YouTube, which says, "Come to us! We will provide you access to the
entire world in all its chaos. You be the judge of the content you want to see. If you create your own content, we will
distribute it. You will be amazed
at the independent power we will make available to you." One need only visit YouTube to see this
open system in all of its expansiveness. This blog, hosted and distributed free by Google, is another example.
• Lurking beneath both are the owners of the
Internet's transmission pipes, the underlying digital network that makes the
Internet possible. These are the
old, now born-again conglomerates of telephony (the duopoly of AT&T and
Verizon) together with the newer cable networks. They grin wolfishly and say, "Neither the Apples nor
the Googles can operate without using our pipes, and we will make sure that
they (and the public) pay the piper." They control the master switches of Wu's title.
Wu wonders whether either the Apple or Google model will dominate the Internet, or neither. I say neither. There will be
some Apples and some Googles. As now, they will remain co-existing and competing
subsystems, not the system, and the user,
still in control, will jump from site to site to get what he or she wants.
Regarding
the controllers of the "master switches," I strongly agree with Wu
that they should be subject to "network
neutrality" regulation, which would ban selective blocking of
individual sites or selective limitation of amounts of data that can be distributed. That issue is currently
being intensely fought out in Congress, the FCC and the courts.
I
noted at the outset that the Internet revolution has totally changed our
expectations. The genie cannot be
put back in the bottle. The
younger generation, unused to yesteryear's limitations on information
availability, weaned on and empowered by the openness of the Internet, will
demand through their clicks, voices, wallets and votes that openness be
maintained. They will not countenance constraint on their choice of
distributors or content providers, or their ability to create independent
content and distribute it themselves.
They will insist that the underlying network-neutrality question be
resolved favorably toward this end.
In short I believe that, at least on the Internet, the perennial cycle
that Wu describes has finally been broken.