The Future is Now: Internet Rights

Last week my Consider colleague Daniel Strauss wrote an intriguing post about the possibility that the Internet could be a human right someday.  Seems like a distant, utopian goal, right?  Well, it looks like the future may come sooner than we thought:

The Federal Communications Commission is proposing an ambitious 10-year plan that will reimagine the nation’s media and technology priorities by establishing high-speed Internet as the country’s dominant communication network.

According to F.C.C. officials briefed on the plan, the commission’s recommendations will include a subsidy for Internet providers to wire rural parts of the country now without access, a controversial auction of some broadcast spectrum to free up space for wireless devices, and the development of a new universal set-top box that connects to the Internet and cable service.

Broadening Internet access doesn’t exactly define that access as a right, but it is a step in that direction.  If it goes through, I think this plan will be incredible.  These days we often praise the development of an increasingly global and interconnected world, but this globalization has a dark side: it tends to favor certain groups to the exclusion of others.  Economically, globalization can bring great benefits to CEOs and shareholders but ignore the interests of workers.  Cultures are disseminated across the face of the earth but often at the expense of smaller local cultures.  And the Internet allows enormously improved access to information, but this is mainly true for developed nations, and even then mostly for people in the cities and suburbs.

People without Internet access can easily miss out on this globalizing world.  It’s possible to exaggerate the benefits the Net can bring, but there’s no doubt that it vastly improves the amount of knowledge people have access to, broadens the ability of two people anywhere on the planet to communicate, and opens up all sorts of new possibilities for political organization, to name a few examples.  The Internet is still surprisingly democratic (though government regulation could help or hurt this).  Bringing the Internet to the rural areas of the United States can only be a good thing.

-Aaron Bekemeyer