Iran and Net Neutrality
I tend not to follow the details of internet governance too closely, and leave it to friends and colleagues like Sascha Meinrath (his blog is Public Ponderings) and Paul Riismandel (the Media Geek). Policy discussions move too fast for me, or, I always know that I'm only on the skin of the onion. From the surface, of course, things are never what they seem.
I have no idea how relaxing the expectations for net neutrality would affect the overall shape of the public sphere. If it's a matter of creating a more expensive tier for video on demand, it might not have any direct effect at all. And what should I care about video on demand, other than it might be a nice way for me to watch baseball late at night?
My question is more along the lines of this: What sort of internet regime would make it harder for the pres-o-dent to launch a military strike against Iran?
Yesterday I lectured at the University of Bergen on the decline and fall of journalism's authority beginning in the late twentieth century--take the 1983 invasion of Grenada as a benchmark moment. One of my hosts asked me about the likelihood of a US attack on Iran. I said the media reports that I rely on don't make it clear that any kind of threat is posed that would justify an attack, and that the Bush administration now has little credibility when it makes accusations about weapons programs, but they'd probably do it anyway. He asked me then whether the US would really use a nuclear weapon in such an attack. Oh yeah, I said, the military strategists are dying to try one of those things. They want to break a taboo. Then another one of my hosts began singing Randy Newman's song. Let's drop the big one, and see what happens.
It does take you back to Grenada, a far simpler day. The Reagan administration launched that attack for obvious political reasons--it was ordered immediately after a truck bomb demolished the marine barracks in Beirut, killing over 200 soldiers. The media were false-footed, but after the fact exposed a series of lies and manipulations. But, with the government still operating under cold-war consensus, no Congressional blowback followed, and, although the news media complained about restrictions on the flow of information, no public outrage supported them. Instead, the news media commenced a long and still ongoing period of self-examination, trying to figger out where their credibility has gone, and generally confusing their credibility with their popularity.
There was no internet to speak of then. Now, nearly a quarter of a century later, information and criticism flows more quickly. Today the news media respond, after a demure pause, to what circulates on the web. As a result, we have far more vigorous media exposure of the failures in Iraq than we ever did of the failures in Vietnam, though the news media are still very reluctant to push the atrocity button. This criticism doesn't seem to deflect policymakers, however. They know something about the toothlessness of the chattering classes.
So I'd give up my video on demand baseball to prevent an attack on Iran. Is net neutrality part of that equation? Or am I asking the wrong question?
I tend not to follow the details of internet governance too closely, and leave it to friends and colleagues like Sascha Meinrath (his blog is Public Ponderings) and Paul Riismandel (the Media Geek). Policy discussions move too fast for me, or, I always know that I'm only on the skin of the onion. From the surface, of course, things are never what they seem.
I have no idea how relaxing the expectations for net neutrality would affect the overall shape of the public sphere. If it's a matter of creating a more expensive tier for video on demand, it might not have any direct effect at all. And what should I care about video on demand, other than it might be a nice way for me to watch baseball late at night?
My question is more along the lines of this: What sort of internet regime would make it harder for the pres-o-dent to launch a military strike against Iran?
Yesterday I lectured at the University of Bergen on the decline and fall of journalism's authority beginning in the late twentieth century--take the 1983 invasion of Grenada as a benchmark moment. One of my hosts asked me about the likelihood of a US attack on Iran. I said the media reports that I rely on don't make it clear that any kind of threat is posed that would justify an attack, and that the Bush administration now has little credibility when it makes accusations about weapons programs, but they'd probably do it anyway. He asked me then whether the US would really use a nuclear weapon in such an attack. Oh yeah, I said, the military strategists are dying to try one of those things. They want to break a taboo. Then another one of my hosts began singing Randy Newman's song. Let's drop the big one, and see what happens.
It does take you back to Grenada, a far simpler day. The Reagan administration launched that attack for obvious political reasons--it was ordered immediately after a truck bomb demolished the marine barracks in Beirut, killing over 200 soldiers. The media were false-footed, but after the fact exposed a series of lies and manipulations. But, with the government still operating under cold-war consensus, no Congressional blowback followed, and, although the news media complained about restrictions on the flow of information, no public outrage supported them. Instead, the news media commenced a long and still ongoing period of self-examination, trying to figger out where their credibility has gone, and generally confusing their credibility with their popularity.
There was no internet to speak of then. Now, nearly a quarter of a century later, information and criticism flows more quickly. Today the news media respond, after a demure pause, to what circulates on the web. As a result, we have far more vigorous media exposure of the failures in Iraq than we ever did of the failures in Vietnam, though the news media are still very reluctant to push the atrocity button. This criticism doesn't seem to deflect policymakers, however. They know something about the toothlessness of the chattering classes.
So I'd give up my video on demand baseball to prevent an attack on Iran. Is net neutrality part of that equation? Or am I asking the wrong question?
posted by jnerone at 3:33 AM
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