This week made us think about the Internet in how open it is for the users. The articles were Degrees of Freedom, Dimensions of Power, by Yochai Benkler, (1); The Contingent Internet, by David D Clark, (2); and Internet Tussles – A Framework fro Analyzing Heterogeneous Networks, by Dustin O’Hara, (3).
In article 1, Yochai made the reader think about how apps produced for the free market were causing phones and tablets to be used far more than desktops by the 2010s. But what I find interesting is when Yochai brings up the phone networks control over the phone users, but then phone users could use wifi on their phone and the phone networks had no control over it. If I understand this correctly. I think he is saying the phone networks are centralized power, while the internet is non-centralized?
The internet is a jack of all trades network because it can connect the user to some many different applications and is designed for a variety of uses. Clark states on page 10, “computers are general-purpose devices; since the Internet hooks computers together, it too ought to be general.” Following up with saying the Internet was designed by communications engineers who worked for telephone companies that did not know what the Internet was for. “The engineers from the world of telephone systems were confounded by the task of designing a system without knowing what its requirements were” (Clark, 10). Clark follows up later, stating this generality has a price. Because it is not perfect for any one particular thing. I think he is saying, the Internet is just “okay” for everything it serves a purpose for and designers have molded it into what it is today.
Article 3 focuses on Internet Tussles, conceptualized by David Clark, and builds upon the actor-network theory. Side note – by reading O’Hara’s article, it occurred to me (and I should have known because I am old enough) that the Internet was originally ran through telephone lines. And it was done simply because they could not afford to run their own network at the time.
O’Hara brings up the phrase “end-to-end,” stating it was the “design of the internet not only meant the internet was open for new people to join, it meant it was pen for them to build upon”(O’Hara, 2). It is much the same point I brought up in Clark’s article in the previous paragraphs. Where the internet is so open, anyone can add anything to it, without restrictions. Is this how we have such things as the dark net? And illegal website? Because of the openness of it?
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