{"id":32,"date":"2017-11-09T05:22:58","date_gmt":"2017-11-09T05:22:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/?p=32"},"modified":"2017-11-09T05:27:17","modified_gmt":"2017-11-09T05:27:17","slug":"the-corporate-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/2017\/11\/09\/the-corporate-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"The Corporate Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"

We heard in class from Prof. Zittrain that the internet began as a “collective hallucination” \u2014 a beautiful (in my opinion) idea that represents a decentralized collection of connections that has no governance and no owner. We also learned that the internet is now moving towards being privately owned; Facebook and Google, primarily, own the majority of the web that we use. Congress even called in<\/a> executives from Facebook, Google, and Twitter for hearings on the Russia ordeal. It’s almost as if these companies represent the general internet, and when the internet is abused, it’s time to turn to them.<\/p>\n

The idea of the internet becoming privately owned is, to me, scary. My question to all of you is: is it inevitable? Also, where else do we see this pattern?<\/p>\n

Prof. Zittrain drew a wonderful comparison between the movement from browsers to apps and the corporatization of the web. I would like to examine some of the history we learned in class: telecommunication began as privately owned by the phone companies (or company), and the internet represented the subversion of monopolistic ownership over communication. Then, corporate ownership began creeping back up on us, and now we have giants like Google that own far more than we know.<\/p>\n

Personally, I believe we are seeing this same pattern in its early stages with media streaming. Netflix blew our minds with its near ability to allow us to “cut the cord” with cable. And, pardon my French, but cable stinks.\u00a0<\/em>Netflix was a release from the monopoly of Comcast in many areas, a break from terrible customer service from cable companies, a break from ads, a break from overpaying to have channels you don’t watch, and more. But, what is happening now? Netflix is relying mostly on its original programming, and ABC, FOX, and NBC are slowly pulling their shows from the service. Why? They own a little website called Hulu.<\/p>\n

And now there’s talk of Disney (which happens to be owned by ABC) starting its\u00a0own\u00a0<\/em>streaming service, just for Disney programs. Then we see HBO GO\/NOW, another streaming service for just HBO shows. Amazon Prime Video pops up. Showtime has a streaming service. Starz. YouTube TV. Suddenly, if we want to watch all of the shows we like, we’re paying for multiple streaming services \u2014 many of which laughably have commercials \u2014 not unlike paying prices similar to cable in the first place.<\/p>\n

The question is: someday, will some service come along and say, “Here’s an idea: I’ll bundle all these streaming services\u00a0together\u00a0<\/em>for you, and you just pay me $X\/month!” And there we have it: cable is back, just disguised as streaming. At that point, however, there is a natural check that keeps streaming services at bay: many people will go back to torrenting after a certain point (not<\/em> me, though, and\u00a0never<\/em> on the Harvard WiFi!).<\/p>\n

Just recently, Uber started allowing tip jars and online tipping \u2014 one of the major draws of Uber in its origins was that it advertised that it paid its drivers a fair wage, and tipping wasn’t required. Are Ubers just going to become the same as old school taxis (that’s right, I called them old school)?<\/p>\n

So, what do you think? Is the privatization of the internet inevitable? Will industries always come full circle, eventually becoming the things we hated to begin with? Where else have you seen this? Is Amazon becoming anything like major retailers? Looking forward to your thoughts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We heard in class from Prof. Zittrain that the internet began as a “collective hallucination” \u2014 a beautiful (in my opinion) idea that represents a decentralized collection of connections that has no governance and no owner. We also learned that the internet is now moving towards being privately owned; Facebook and Google, primarily, own the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8867,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8867"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions\/34"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}