United communications in a disunited world

"The Web has become so synonymous with inter-networking that people forget what we really have is a variety of computer networks of different kinds. The most popular messaging software in the world runs on one of these closed networks: it's called SMS.

In the 1990s, people found it useful to think of One Internet because thinking of a single, unitary computer network appeared to imbue the technology with its own agency and purpose. The One Internet is popular with today's Californian hive mind set, who view technology as a short-cut around all kinds of messy social and political problems - and that's the thinking behind Web 2.0 utopianism, too.

But out in the real world, it doesn't work like this. Limits are invariably imposed on technology by economic or social factors. For example, the reason dark fiber isn't exploited, and that we don't have terrific gigabit speed ISPs here in the US (after billions of dollars were invested laying the fibre) is simple. It's because a) it isn't economic for a private company to exploit it - there's no money in it - and b) because there isn't a consensus for the state to subsidize their operation, either. In South Korea, where government directs capital more explicitly, things are different, and you can see a tentative change in attitude to this here, with the growth of the Muni Wi-Fi movement. Limits are also imposed because the public finds a technology unpalatable: nuclear power and GM food are good examples. The only sure thing is that limits are, eventually, imposed."

By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco