Esther Dyson, dynamist

Net doyenne Esther Dyson has a thoughtful piece on net neutrality over at the Puffington Host. She does a nice job of avoiding rhetoric and makes what I think are the sensible points on the subject:

[...] the paternalists and free-loaders who want to keep the Net the way it (supposedly) always was, open and "free" (for themselves as well as for consumers)? They want to make it illegal for certain (big bad) companies to offer too much in the way of network-based enhancements and charge for them. They are generally suspicious of business and even of consumers making their own choices. [...]

Perhaps the consumers should be able to decide for themselves, but amidst all the rhetoric they have a hard time figuring out what to ask for....

There are real issues here, but legislation isn't gong to solve them. Antitrust enforcement is probably the best solution.

To which I say, hallelujah. As much as I am willing to employ snark in this debate, my position comes down to the simple idea of avoiding new laws where they are not necessary. Remember, laws can only impede — they can't effectively compel you (or an organization or an industry) to do things. They can only specify what you cannot do.

We cannot legislate new bandwidth into existence. All we can do is to provide as free a playing field as possible, with basic protections (such as property rights and antitrust) at the outer margins.

Especially in the case of the technology industry, keeping all possibilities open is the way to maximize progress and truly measure public demand. Prophylactic new laws — beyond the myriad ones we already have — can only slow this down.

Dyson proves herself a dynamist on this point, in that she believes that our priorities should be based around making changes — and choices — possible. Net neutrality is the opposite of this: it is an attempt to lock in the current technological tradition at the expense of future possibilities.