Net Neutrality. It sounds technical if you've not taken the time to understand the issue. If you have, it is relatively simple. So, what really matters? Choice.
Apart and above all the doings of this smaller increment is the larger trend. The Era of Choice. This is an era when humans, guided by technology have reversed the dynamics associated with commercial channels of communication to such an extent that entire industries are seeing forced change across America (and worldwide societies)to adapt to people's new behaviors and expectations.
For analytical purposes I use the idea that societies function according to social mood and that this slow moving "root of all social trends" shapes our creative endeavors, especially business and industry.It is only one dynamic in the big picture but it is exceedingly important.
Just before launching this discussion as its own blog (more than a year ago) I looked closely at social media tools and offered my perspective on what they were telling us about where we are taking media in general. My conclusions were simple and straight forward.(look at the links in top right column of this blog) They are worth revisiting now. First, social media tools scream out for Choice and while this social trend can be seen from many angles, social media tools demonstrate most clearly that two way communication in channels for content is being directed by the social impulse toward Choice. Second, how each generation grew into adulthood with some or all of this technology in their lives shaped their experiences and attitudes and therefore, the generational divide offers a critical perspective on the psycho-graphics of media consumption, marketing endeavors, and the developing social protocol of the digital universe. In a nutshell how you engage Boomers and Millennials requires two differing standards but the long view on a number of core issues must be shaped by those immersed in technology and not those who saw it develop in their lifetime. Third, social media is a blazing indication of the specialization to come, and it has barely begun. As this dramatic process fans out throughout our creative endeavors in America, the tide of social mood will shape this process very broadly.
Each of these three social dynamics must be seen separately and together and only then can you appreciate where the social tool, guaranteed in the first amendment to the US Constitution, will be taken by a free and creative people. Media is a higher order social tool that we use to create other things everywhere. And despite how the editorials in respected papers are calling for ivory towers of journalism to be rebuilt, I submit that this tool will be managed properly by the People and for the People. In the years ahead the government bureaucracy will endeavor to build large awe inspiring structures that seek to better control outcomes. In the meantime, people will take the critical functions produced by media organizations and break them up into smaller pieces, specialize them, and produce an altogether new social infrastructure. (It is going to happen whether I say so or not.) And if you are one of those already suspicious of the free market (aka the American people) I suggest you spend your angst elsewhere while the people get together to do the heavy lifting of building of a better media infrastructure, one that is primarily social, with the profits/payoff always out on the horizon of group endeavor, and not next quarter (as was promised by big media companies if only they were allowed to get bigger). (If you are sensing a theme in the previous era you're not alone or wrong.)
So, net neutrality is about the market's access to information and it is critical that it reflect consumer Choice and not the channel provider's choice. This conflict of interest is telling us that further specialization in the market for digital access providers is needed, and in time, it will happen. What really matters most is that we let the American people design the solutions and keep special interests relegated to the tools in the tool shed. If we do that, America has very bright prospects as we navigate this unusual period of social correction. If we do not do that then the market for content will struggle for freedom until we do, because it is what really matters right now. There is no better stimulus than a free people doing what needs to be done. Better media (on many levels) makes people better at what they do. That is exactly what we need most right now. Any new rules must protect the consumer's ability to get their Choice.
Net neutrality is essential. Click on keep reading and you'll see a letter a friend sent to his Congressional representative voting against it in Congress. No matter what your opinion is or how it was shaped, Speak up! Social corrections end when we create our way out of them; you do not spend your way out unless the money goes to things that are creatively productive. Limiting creativity for the sake of profitability is socially and politically foolish if you are looking beyond the next election cycle.
