[Author’s Note: This article was originally written for my ‘History of the Media’ course at New York University. It doesn’t directly pertain to gaming, but hopefully you find it interesting. Feel free to leave feedback in the comments section below.]
Most people who use the Internet don’t actually understand it. They think the Internet is Facebook and Twitter, Google and YouTube, Wikipedia and WikiLeaks. That’s not entirely incorrect, but there are underlying gaps in their knowledge. At its base, fundamental level, the Internet (short for Internetwork) is a series of protocols used to link together computers, forming a now-global system of interconnected devices.
The notion that the Internet is a completely open, unrestricted medium — for the people, by the people — is true in essence. “There’s no headquarters for the Internet,” explains 54 year-old Jay Rosen, journalism professor at New York University and founder of PressThink.org. “If somebody said, ‘Ok Internet, take me to your leader,’ there’s nowhere to take them.”
Vertical communication implies a flow or information from state (or some higher authority) to citizen, whereas horizontal communication equates to peer-to-peer discussion. The Internet’s lack of leadership makes the medium optimal for the latter, undoubtedly disrupting the political and social landscape at large. The recent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt provide perfect examples. While the bold-faced headlines proclaiming ‘Twitter revolution’ or ‘Facebook revolution’ are largely misguided — the people revolted, not the technology — social media played a key role in the uprisings. People may be dissatisfied with their government, but will likely be unwilling to act unless they know that others will stand with them. In the past, such information was spread through printed pamphlets, word of mouth, graffiti and so on. Now, however, it’s easy to connect to people all across a city, country, even the entire world — all without leaving one’s living room.
This notion becomes muddled from a practical perspective, however. Yes, the Worldwide Web is a decentralized system that nobody outright owns, but a number of big players — oppressive regimes abroad, reactionary elements here in the U.S. — can subject pressure on the world’s Internet Service Providers (ISP), Domain Name Servers (DNS), and other web companies to either limit access entirely (as seen recently in Egypt), or insidiously tweak certain aspects of the web (i.e. China). Those corporations also have profit margins to maintain, creating a business driven, occasionally hostile force that stands between users and the Internet.
“Service providers like Amazon can cut you off if they decide you’re violating their terms of service,” says Rosen. “But come on, is somebody really going to pressure a domain name server company to actually shut down an address? I mean, that would be suicide for that company, that would never happen — that’s what we used to say. And then with WikiLeaks that exact thing happened.”
As more and more people call for change and reform online, the authorities man their positions, trying to hold back the floodgates. But they will fail. As the web’s ‘vertical’ entities stamp down on the lowly ‘horizontal’ peons at the bottom, the people realize that their best interests aren’t being fairly represented. Sooner or later, these repressive entities will fall to the increasingly unified masses.
[Editor’s Note: The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of Eric Blattberg.]