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Principles for sustainable digitalization
Published in Steffen Lange, Tilman Santarius, Smart Green World?, 2020
Steffen Lange, Tilman Santarius
This has to change. If digitalization were consistently aligned to the common good as a guiding principle, far more people – indeed, society as a whole – would benefit. One debate that is already focused on the common good concerns the issue of network neutrality.18 Net neutrality means that the internet is equally accessible to all providers and users and does not discriminate by content. Without net neutrality, peer-to-peer models such as BitTorrent, which enables sharing of files and data between users, would operate much more slowly. The numerous and frequent attacks on net neutrality by corporations and legislators are aimed at entrenching power, monopolies and existing inequalities.19 They also prevent new and innovative applications and start-ups from becoming established. Frightening, too, is that about half of the world’s data transmission capacity through glass fibre cables in the oceans are owned by Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft. There is increasingly less separation between those who provide content and those who run the infrastructure.20
The Fountainhead
Published in Ted G. Lewis, The Signal, 2019
TCP/IP became a political topic in 2015–2018 when the net neutrality controversy broke out. Net neutrality means every online content producer and consumer should enjoy the same transmission speeds and access. There should be no discrimination on the part of Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and certainly no throttling of bandwidth. The net neutrality controversy reached political levels when the US Government decided to regulate the Internet. This is likely to have major ramifications for the future of TCP/IP. By the time you read this, TCP/IP may have already been changed to accommodate politicians.
Service Systems: An Overview
Published in A. Ravi Ravindran , Paul M. Griffin , Vittaldas V. Prabhu , Service Systems Engineering and Management, 2018
A. Ravi Ravindran , Paul M. Griffin , Vittaldas V. Prabhu
Note that telephones, cable TV, and Internet services overlap with communication and entertainment. In 2015, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled under its “Net Neutrality” Policy that all Internet providers should give equal access to websites, apps, and video services. Communications companies challenged that ruling in federal court. But the court ruled in FCC’s favor in June 2016, agreeing that Internet service is in fact a utility. However, in late 2017, under the new FCC chairman, appointed by President Trump, the commission scrapped the “Net Neutrality” policy!
Make way for the wealthy? Autonomous vehicles, markets in mobility, and social justice
Published in Mobilities, 2020
Advocates of net neutrality have drawn on these sorts of arguments to suggest that governments should regulate to ensure that all parties have equal access to the infrastructure of the Web. We believe that these considerations are still more powerful when it comes to physical mobility. As the literature on mobility justice has emphasised, mobility is a fundamental social resource (Sheller 2018). Even in the age of the Internet, many forms of social, economic, and political participation are premised on the ability to be in particular places at particular times (Sheller 2008; see also Urry 2000, pp. 191–192). Further increasing inequalities in access to urban mobility through differential pricing of travel via autonomous vehicles will entrench and exacerbate social inequality in multiple dimensions. Moreover, the public nature of the interactions on the road, as opposed to online, is likely to make these inequalities more socially and psychologically salient – and thus stressful for all concerned (Wilkinson and Pickett 2010). Even if it could be shown that the poor would be better off in terms of being able to access the roads when journey times are priced, the resulting increase in inequality is an affront to any account of social justice that emphasises equality of opportunity.