BAD AT&T!! BAD!!
I have to say that overall I really liked the “Humanity Lobotomy” video, especially the part with the 15 year old kid crying about being shafted when it comes to his internet service. He was complaining about being so young to the technology and I think this kid embodies our society as a whole. When you think about it the internet really is young and hasn't really reached its full potential yet. Most of what we see today is the internet its youthful stages and so we definitely could be exemplified by that child crying about being shafted in such a manner. If we were forced to have to pay for each service at such a young stage of the internet that really would be us. Or maybe i'm just thinking too deep. The video does get a little eccentric at times and can go a little overboard. The main idea is there it just seems to make you think that the end of the world is coming or something.
The article by Andrew Orlowski is a good one as well. The text is all over the place and kind of difficult to read the way that it is structured but I like the points. The quote by Whitacre makes me particularly angry in that he goes as far as to claim that because they own the pipelines they should be able to charge for each type of usage instead of just connecting to the internet. To think that he could even come up with the following quote is just outrageous, "The Internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment and for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!". I didn't include the whole quote for length constraints but that last sentence sums it up. I have to say that if things did go the way that Whitacre and AT&T wished for them to go things would turn to be quite awful. However, I do have a certain sense that they wouldn't be allowed to go as far as the "Humanity Lobotomy" video claims. I mean, there is quite the stir (which a lot of this comes from the internet, and thats the beauty of it), and the government has broken up AT&T's previous conglomerations in the past (1980s).
As a final note. I do believe that net neutrality is very important. I really believe that without it, our rights of free speech would be restricted somewhat. Also, not to mention the issue of monopolistic profit being extracted from us consumers always looming over us if AT&T did happen to enact this concept. Besides the profit, the lack of quality service that will be forced upon us (look at radio nowadays, and how absolutely horrible that is). I do however think that the cable/telephony companies will not be able to enact their plans and that net neutrality will prevail ironically because of the net itself. I never really had an idea about what net neutrality was until this class and the information that is available to me on the internet and thats the beauty of it. I think that overall the spread of information regarding this topic on the internet will help turn the tide against these corporate giants. End note.