One Step Closer to a Closed Internet
From the perspective of non-tech people, the internet has actually grown by shedding its neutrality. Huge numbers came to the net because of the "e" of IE, the "s" of skype or the "f" of facebook. As we watch people spend all of their time online locked in a closed platform (or spend all their money in hardware they don't control), we can't be surprised that net neutrality doesn't resonate with them. We can't just fight the occasional battle and then wonder why we're losing the war. If there's more money to be made in crushing net neutrality than in leveraging it, it will get crushed (specially in America).<p>A basic problem is that technological literacy is not growing fast enough. In fact, ignorance is celebrated. Both Apple and Microsoft are lowering the bar for their operating systems every year. The lack of monetization solutions has made it necessary to sell the user, and their ignorance or just lack of interest facilitates this tremendously. If you want to be able to choose freedom over convenience, you need to care for how things work.<p>Meanwhile, modern corporations are perfectly aware of how net neutrality got them to the top, of how relinquishing it allows them to stay on top and of how suppressing it keeps other companies from doing to them what they did to the older corporations that used to rule the world.