d o w n s t r e a m: How precious is net-neutrality?

What are the most pressing issues facing the world?

The answer to that question depends on how far you peel the onion. If you accept that the most pressing issues all stem from human behavior, then you might say that the existence of humans is issue number one. That answer doesn't leave much of an onion to peel though. The sheer number of humans is not a very interesting answer either because it doesn't get at the root of the problem; absent excessive affluence, there's no obvious reason that Earth cannot sustain 9 billion people. No, the most interesting pressing issues are the ones that get to the heart of things.

Here's one: the absence of a collective understanding among industrialized society that our consumer behavior is destroying our habitat.

... (pause while Ayn Rand rolls over in her grave)...

Anyone who ever consciously made a sustainable choice - riding a bike instead of driving, choosing the tilapia instead of the swordfish, holding coffee in a ceramic rather than disposable paper cup - only to have the proverbial Hummer drive by and toss a styrofoam container of processed food on the pavement in front of you, has felt the futility of acting sustainably in a world where most people don't know what sustainable behavior is, let alone act that way. That's a stark demonstration of the absence of a collective understanding.

Sustainably minded people leading by example will not win the race with extinction. And phylogeny doesn't move fast enough for us to wait while our brains develop an inter-neural synapse across which we can mind-meld our understanding of this pressing issue. A tail-spin calls for immediate action. We need to accellerate large scale influence through existing paradigms in order to build an understanding of the issue and our individual roles in it.

History proves that, given a catalyst, we have the capacity to transform society in profound ways. Perceptible degradation of global living conditions is proving ample catalyst for change. And we have a powerful tool to connect us in ways we have only just begun to understand.

The Internet has emerged as the single most powerful medium for social participation across the globe. It's influence and reach expands every day. With serious efforts underway to bridge the digitial divide, we can hope to have over half the world's population connected and participating in the global conversation within our lifetime. The Internet is the medium across which we are building this collective understanding.

The potential positive influence of global participation is not assured in a network that favors one community over another. The Internet today is essentially destination neutral. But some network service providers have proposed charging content providers for higher quality of service to deliver their content, which would result in diminished choice for consumers of content. Throttling choice of content will reduce the net to the equivalent of television where virtually all content is delivered with the express intent of driving consumer demand for products and services. The Internet has been a safe harbor for universal access to content, but would rapidly deteriorate into another platform for big business to dominate society's mindshare, if service providers were allowed to practice "non-neutrality". We must preserve the network's neutrality in order for the global conversation to reach everyone who has a stake in the design of our future.

At this critical juncture in humanity's social evolution, can we afford to have corporations throttling some voices and amplifying others?