Paying for Restrictions?

When I was in middle school my family shared one computer.  My mom held the main account on AOL and it did not take me long to figure out that she had set strict parental controls. Not only could she monitor all of my activity, she could also make certain websites unavailable to me. At my high school, each student was provided with a laptop for school use. Although they were usually old and not in the best condition, it was nice to have my own laptop. However, it was not hard to figure out that these computer's Internet access was restricted by the school. The school blocked all gaming websites as well as social networking sites such as Facebook and anything else that the school deemed inappropriate or non educational.  Upon arriving to the University of Richmond I learned that we are provided with free Internet access.  However, this Internet access comes with its own form of restrictions.  Although it does not ban us from accessing certain websites, it does slow down when accessing certain websites.

 In class we discussed the very important concept of net neutrality that Wu discusses in The Master Switch. Net neutrality advocates no restrictions on the Internet for paid users. This to me seems to be a good principle because if I pay for the Internet I want a good connection that is not based on the content of the site or the provider.  The tubes that make up the Internet, however, can be manipulated by the service providers. This would mean that some websites take less time to load because the service provider made the tube bigger. While other websites may have a smaller tube to travel through, meaning it will take longer to load. In a similar scenario, Apple has placed restrictions on things such as applications that can be downloaded to an iPhone.  It has led to a large number of people jailbreaking their iPhones to get around such restrictions. Steve Jobs has also acknowledged that Adobe Flash is not supported on Apple products. These restrictions have come to upset many people, because just like paying Internet users, Apple users do not want restrictions on something for which they have paid.  

I have come to respect parental controls such as the ones my mom used when I was younger. Although I hated my high school's restrictions at the time, I understand why the school created them. However, the idea that a service provider can slow down my connection based on my activity or based on the provider. I think that the Internet should be neutral and there should be no discrimination based on the content of a site or the provider's preference.  Who wants to pay to be restricted?

Was it Greed?

Throughout Tim Wu’s, The Master Switch, he presents the different technologies that have greatly impacted our society and the stories behind how each came to be known.  In some of these stories we have seen greedy and control hungry people looking to create or discover the next big technology in the information industry.  However Tim Wu states, “the motivations of information moguls can almost never be exhaustively described in terms of simple greed and vanity” (315).  He makes a valid claim that “the men and women that run the information empires of today and tomorrow will inevitably have enormous power over the extent of our free expression” (315). 

There are several ways in which Wu proves this to be true.  For example, when the television was first invented the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) suppressed it by banning its use.  Eleven years later, David Sarnoff re-invented the television and it became a technology that “shaped American popular culture and social norms in the twentieth century, to the point of virtually creating them” (139).  This further proves Wu’s point that information moguls, such as Sarnoff, come to have great power because of their inventions. It is doubtful that many people knew that it was not a fully original idea of David Sarnoff. He received all of the credit for the invention of the television because he waited to re-create it at a time that would give him a maximum amount of recognition and power.  Although it seems that Sarnoff’s motives were purely based on greed and the desire to be recognized as the inventor of the next, big thing, where would we be without it? Today, people use televisions to watch the news, see how the stock market is doing, for entertainment purposes as well as educational means.  If Sarnoff had not re-created the television how much longer would the FCC’s ban lasted?

In another example that Wu presents, Daniel Drawbaugh had come up with the invention of the telephone but had not done much with his findings.  Seven years later, Bell invented the telephone.  It did not matter that Drawbaugh had first invented it because he had not done anything to establish it nor to present it to the public.  Bell, however, formed alliances with Gardiner Hubbard, his primary investor, who came to support the idea of the telephone as an invention that could replace the telegraph.  The motives in this situation had changed from improving the telegraph, to making something better than the telegraph.  It did not matter who came up with the invention of the telephone first, all that mattered was who made it the next big thing, and Bell did just that.

Another technological advance that Wu discusses is the answering machine.  AT&T restrained the release of the answering machine due to a selfish fear that it would result in people abandoning the use of the telephone.  They suppressed Clarence Hickman’s discoveries in 1934 as well as any further research on the magnetic storage, which included the magnetic recording tape necessary to create the answering machine.  It was not until sixty years later that a historian named Mark Clark came across Hickman’s research.  Although it seems that AT&T was being selfish they believed that it was “safer to shut down a thrilling line of research than to risk the Bell system” (106).  They were trying to protect their company when in reality they were being paranoid and stifling a technology that is a commercially valuable discovery.  Where would we be today without the answering machine?  What if AT&T had completely covered all tracks of research?  How much longer would it have taken for someone else to invent it in the United States?

Today, we use technology so much that it is difficult to imagine what life would be like without it.  It is unfortunate that people battle over who will come out with the next big thing, but if they didn’t would we have been as quick to come out with all of the technology that we have today?  The competitive aspect is one thing that motivates people to work harder, and may be a huge factor in these situations that Wu presents.  This competition is often fueled by a desire for power and recognition, but there is something else to it.  The person who originally creates a device may have extreme creativity, but perhaps not the ingenuity and/or a sense of industry to market their invention.  Therefore, the person who took the next step gets credit for bringing the invention to the public.  The person who who draws the public's attention to the invention will get the fame and credit for the invention but it is due to the fact that they took the time and initiative to earn most of the credit, and the fact that their invention became available to others has helped to advance our society, so they deserve credit.  

The people who are driven to invent the new popular technologies are most likely going to succeed and gain an influential power over our free expression just as Wu claims, but it is because they not only invented it but they were also skilled in how to market the invention.  While it is up to each individual to decide if the people were right or wrong in taking credit for an invention, the fact is someone invented them and without these technologies, where would we be today?  These technologies have a true and lasting impact on our culture and society and their inventors are responsible for it, thus they have made a mark in society that has greatly contributed to, as Wu says, “the extent of our free expression” (315).

  Last night I was struggling to fall asleep so I watched the movie Funny People.  As I was watching, I began to notice that the movie was appropriately Rated R for language and crude sexual humor throughout, and some sexuality.  It occurred to me that this movie would have never passed the Production Code that Tim Wu discusses in The Master Switch. The Production Code that was introduced in the mid 1930’s, set high standards for films, dances and other performances and productions. The censorship of the Production Code put an end to movies that, in the words of Mick LaSalle, a film critic of pre-Code movies, “celebrate independence and initiative” (Wu: 118).  The Production Code followed these three basic principles:

“No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it.  Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.

Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented.

Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation” (Wu: 120)

Among the other rules regarding public art in terms of the Production Code, suggestive dancing and obscenity were forbidden.  In today’s society these strict regulations would make a vast majority of our entertainment, whether it be television, movies, dance pieces, plays and many more, be considered inappropriate and thus would not be permitted production.  

It is hard to imagine a change such as the Production Code emerging and putting an abrupt halt to the production of media that violates its regulations.  However that is what happened in the mid 1930’s.  It was evident which movies were released pre-code versus those that were released prior to the Production Code of the mid 1930’s due to the drastic chage.  Thankfully today’s movie producers simply rate movies based on their content as opposed to being limited to rules such as the Production Code.  This provides us with the ability to see movies that display crime, suggestive behavior and obscenity with reasonable restrictions based on age or maturity.