[Random-bits] Howard Rheingold: the stupider web and AOL, etc

[James Love]

Here are a few comments from Howard Rheingold and me on the AOL merger
--  jamie

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/01/11/aol_reaction/index.html

Howard Rheingold, Net pioneer and author of "Virtual Community"

The more the Net becomes like TV, the stupider we are going to become;
the more TV becomes like the Net, the more intelligent we'll become.
It's the mass media-fication/dumbing down of the Net; the bigger these
enterprises get and the broader their reach, the less intelligent their
content. The Net used to be a grand alternative to television, and it
still is. But with the expectations of the mass market, the big center
of the curve, clearly AOL's ambition is to be more and more like
television.



Jamie Love, director of the Consumer Project on Technology
									
The current system -- you get a pipe from your ISP and you do what you
want with content -- is that going to be history? The architecture
that's being proposed by the big cable operators would allow them to
discriminate in terms of performance ... They could design highly
discriminatory platforms, so that [your content] will play differently
if you have a business relationship with the owner of the last mile.
Whether or not the operators go the common courier route or the common
cable route -- "We own the pipe and decide what goes on it" -- is a big
deal.

AOL has been a big advocate of open access -- we need to have companies
like AOL beating up on the regulators at state and federal level to
change things. This merger is partly evidence that AOL thinks it's
losing the battle to protect the competitors.

AOL was the biggest proponent of making it a level playing field. They
say they still are, but it depends how much you trust Steve Case. We
don't; historically he does what benefits him at the time.

-- 
James Love, Consumer Project on Technology
v. 1.202.387.8030, fax 1.202.234.5176
love@cptech.org, http://www.cptech.org