[governance] Cerfing the Web, or Serfing the Web? (Understanding Google's Internet Evangelism against Internet Access Rights)
parminder
parminder at itforchange.net
Tue Jan 17 05:33:58 EST 2012
On Tuesday 17 January 2012 01:15 PM, parminder wrote:
> snip
>
> All of the above is not necessarily a precise critique of the Vint
> Cerf's article as such, but these are the thoughts that arise in my
> mind on reading it, and the subsequent discussion. When one takes up
> the pen, or the keyboard, to write an op-ed with the heading 'Internet
> access is not a human right' one would generally have a compelling
> reason behind it. Frankly, I havent been able to divine the reason
> that propelled Vint in this case. I am sure he was not simply
> interested in interrogating conceptual issues around rights, need of
> horses and the such. So, why did he really take the trouble to write
> this article, is something I am not clear about. What problem was he
> addressing (as a techie, such clarity of thought must be native to him)?
And in case interrogating the conceptual categories around human rights
and Internet as a technology was the intention of the article, a few
more comments:
One, I find the article rather confused about the terms human rights and
civil rights, especially the latter.
Second, it is also not quite on the spot about what one means by the
Internet when one speaks of a right to the Internet. One doesnt mean
necessarily a specific technology, IP/ TCP protocol or whatever. The
wider world today understands by the Internet, a techno-social paradigm,
which certainly is not transitory. It is here to stay, a permanent part
of what human civilisation is and will be. Whether we take Internet to
mean,
(1) in a relatively narrower sense, a versatile p2p horizontal platform
of seamless communication and interaction, or
(2) in a broader sense, as a new 'space' of human action (the cyberspace?)
The precise technical nature of the two above may change (and we would
increasingly be quite unmindful of the underlying technology, as we may
not be too bothered about what fuel may run a motor), but the broad
techno-social nature of the 'internet' and its social implications have
enough specificity already formed for it to be permanent and
sufficiently 'recognisable/ fixable' part of our societies, as language
and the written word are (around which, for instance, the right to
education is formed).
Parminder
>
> Parminder
>
>
> On Tuesday 17 January 2012 09:21 AM, Paul Lehto wrote:
>>
>> It would be odd for an evangelist of the Christian religion, or
>> any other religion, to argue that people had no right of access to
>> the "Technology" of the Christian religion - the book known as the
>> Bible. But Vinton G. Cerf, official "chief Internet evangelist" for
>> Google, Inc., strangely argued an analogous proposition: That people
>> have "no right to access the Internet" Mr. Cerf is paid to evangelise
>> for by Google, Inc. Calling the Internet a mere tool or technology
>> that enables "real" rights such as free speech, Mr. Cerf apparently
>> considers anyone denied the Internet by arbitrary government action,
>> for example, to have been deprived of nothing they have a right to
>> access. Would a religious "evangelist" take the same attitude about
>> accessing the Bible, and think that the right to freedom of religion
>> did NOT encompass a right to access the Bible in either print or
>> electronic form?
>>
>> I find Mr. Cerf's argument to be, frankly, nonsensical. At the
>> same time, I can readily understand it as a coherent statement of
>> Google's business position on the future of the Internet when Cerf's
>> statements are considered side by side with Google CEO Eric Schmidt's
>> famous statements to the Wall Street Journal in 2010 comparing
>> Google's classic search engine business with its newer Android-based
>> strategy, focused on giving Android away to cell phone companies for
>> free, because of the extremely lucrative market thus made available
>> to Google to sell targeted ads to cell phone users:
>>
>> "I actually think most people don't want Google to answer
>> their questions," he elaborates. "*They want Google to tell
>> them what they should be doing next."*
>>
>> Let's say you're walking down the street. Because of the info
>> Google has collected about you, "we know roughly who you are,
>> roughly what you care about, roughly who your friends are."
>> [And, thanks to Android GPS capabilities, they know where you
>> are, within a tolerance of about one foot, if you carry an
>> Android "smart"phone.]
>>
>> Google's business vision for the future of the Internet is
>> reasonably clear: They already have extremely detailed data on
>> each user, and they want to use all of that data to push ads in
>> front of users allegedly targeted to what Google "already knows"
>> they want, and sell many "heads ups" to local restaurants and
>> other "opportunities" in the physical vicinity of wherever the
>> Android user may happen to be.
>>
>> If the above idea is even close to being correct (and it makes
>> sense of Schmidt's bold claim that we "want Google to tell [us]
>> what [to do] next") then we can understand why Google, via their
>> official public face and Internet evangelist Vinton G. Cerf,
>> would try to evangelize against Internet access rights in the
>> January 4, 2012 New York Times: *Any such "right to access" the
>> Internet is clearly a potential interference with Google's
>> business plan to reconfigure the Internet based on what it thinks
>> we want from the Internet*, in Google's sole discretion, based on
>> the voluminous data Google routinely collects on users.
>>
>> You and I may prefer to make our own discoveries on the Internet,
>> and do our own searches. But Google, quite literally, thinks it
>> knows better than we do, and even goes so far as to claim that
>> it's what we really want from Google, in the end: for Google to
>> tell us all what to do.
>>
>> Many people object to Google's idea with fervor, and would much
>> prefer to tell Google /where to go/, than to have Google tell
>> them what to do.
>>
>> But imagine an aggressive, ad-selling, data-shaping future google
>> that is choosing so much data for us and putting it in front of
>> our faces that it can be said that the "Internet" as we now know
>> it is no longer accessible to us, only an edited and targeted
>> shadow of the Internet chosen by Google is accessible to us, as a
>> practical matter, on our devices. This is not too hard to
>> imagine at all, since most of it is already here. Such a
>> "personalized" Internet is but a shadow, albeit an arguably
>> personalized and targeted shadow, of the Internet we know today.
>> Perhaps (and this is only a maybe) we could still get to the
>> "full Internet" if we are committed to doing so and know what we
>> are doing, but to do so we will have to wade past Google's
>> paternalistic suggestions for what we should be doing next, and
>> past Google's conclusion that people no longer want "Google to
>> provide them with information, they want google to tell them what
>> to do."
>>
>>
>> Clearly, a right to access the Internet is in tension with, if
>> not in conflict with, Google's business vision for the future of
>> the Internet. Mr. Cerf's many notable achievements related to
>> the Internet aside, he indisputably owes a duty of loyalty to his
>> employer, Google, and in this particular context, Mr. Cerf is not
>> speaking as a true evangelist for the Internet, he is speaking
>> out of loyalty to the forthcoming business vision and
>> profitability of his employer, Google Inc.
>>
>> Perhaps Google's increasingly paternalistic vision of Internet
>> users, in which they decide for us what we should do next, and
>> presume that we don't really want Google to simply provide
>> information at our choosing, will one day give new meaning to the
>> phrase Cerfing the Net, which perhaps will be spelled Serfing the
>> Net, in honor of Vinton G. Cerf's feudalistic exposition on their
>> new internet reality in which one's rights of access to the
>> Internet are predetermined, as in feudal days, by the land (or
>> operating system) one is born on or born into.
>>
>> The masters of the universe at Google are indeed on the very
>> precipice of being the Lords of the Internet, not evangelists of
>> the Internet. Lords do not simply answer searching questions,
>> Lords tell us what we should be doing next. Evangelists hope and
>> pray that ALL will access the Internet or the Bible, but by
>> saying there is no right of access to the Internet, Mr. Serf is
>> made himself and fellow executives at Google our Lords, and
>> abandoned his post as Chief evangelist of the Internet, at Google.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Paul R Lehto, J.D.
>> P.O. Box 1
>> Ishpeming, MI 49849
>> lehto.paul at gmail.com <mailto:lehto.paul at gmail.com>
>> 906-204-4026 (cell)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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