Access to the Internet

Abstract: Using the Internet depends, in the first instance, on access to the network. The initial emergence of "the Internet" in the early 1990s, from the increasing connectivity of a series of university and government networks alongside private services like America Online, Prodigy, and CompuServe, occurred almost entirely across slow dial-up modem connections over telephone wires. Sufficient for email, Usenet news groups, transferring relatively small files, and later viewing simple web pages, slow transfer made consumption of data rich content infuriating and its provision unprofitable. There was, however, an important compatibility between the Internet architecture and the plain old telephone system. The basic protocols of the Internet treat all information as equal. They do not recognize rich content or poor content, content owned by one person or another. So too, the basic telephone network, because it is regulated as a common carrier by the FCC, was required to treat all these data calls alike. These consistencies meant that in this new medium, unlike in the mass media of the 20th century -- television, cable, and newspapers -- no one had much of an advantage over anyone else in communicating their views to the world. The low bandwidth available also meant that "production value" -- expensive sets and cameras -- that also limited access to the opportunities to speak in traditional mass media, were less important. The result was a substantially more egalitarian communications medium than any that the 19th and 20th century had known, at least for a while and for limited communications applications.

Details

Additional Information