The grant of Internet technology to private industry followed a similar pattern. All roads onto this new civilian network lead through our existing regional communications market operators: the “Baby Bell” telecom incumbents. Even the secondary commercial channel goes through an existing central-broadcast incumbency: the local television cable operators. Both institutions follow the same hub-and-spoke distribution model within their “last mile.” The core hub represents the authority, the incumbents, while the spoke ends represent us, the little people — the “subscribers.” There is currently no such thing as an eCitizen — we can’t even vote on our Internet connections! We’re all just “subscribers” paying for a “service,” no matter how few providers actually exist, no matter how powerless we are against them.
What we need now is a new, bottom-up, “first mile” version of the Internet. This new vision for the Internet can exploit these existing institutions, yet it does not require any of them. I think we can build something even better than Network Neutrality into this new design. Instead, we can build a people-centered network. The only prejudices we should have to deal with on this network are our own.