Just got off the phone with a friend who's also a friend of Michael Powell, who I insulted in today's first post (below). Our mutual friend would like us to talk.
I've met Michael, and still have his business card here. We had a nice conversation at the time (a few years back, at a PC Forum), and he's clearly a good guy. So, with those grounds for conversation established, let's proceed.
Michael, it's about language. The vocabularies we use to describe a subject are essentially metaphorical: borrowed from other subjects. This is unavoidable, and actually a Good Thing (as cognitive linguists will tell you). But, just as everything looks like a nail when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a transport system when all you use is a transport vocabulary: when you have "media" for the "transport" and "delivery" of "content" to "consumers" who need "access" to it; and when we're used to regulating systems with "carriers"; and "transmitters" and "receivers" and "coverage areas" and so on.
As I said here, the way we've always (and rightly) conceptualized "communications" doesn't fit the Net, because the Net was not conceived by its makers as a delivery system for "content."
The Net's architecture is end-to-end, on purpose. It has been described as a World of Ends. In ways as deep and essential as the core of the Earth, it's something nobody can own and everybody can use. Plus one more thing: it's a place everybody can improve as well. Which is why it keeps improving.
The people improving it aren't just the big companies you're used to wrestling with at the FCC. They're independent developers. Look at blogging, now with 4 million producers of free speech. Or podcasting, which just got started and is already exploding at a nuclear rate.
The way we describe the Net (and the Web) is primarily in place terms. We have "sites" that we also call "locations" with "addresses." We often talk about the Net as an "environment" or a "habitat." For regulatory purposes, the best description we use is "commons." All of those terms derive from conceiving the Net as a place, rather than as a transport system.
In this place we're writing, speaking, talking, inventing, innovating and doing business. We're not just "consumers" looking for "access" to "content" from "producers" or "providers," though many of us do only that. The Net is so broadly supportive that any of us can as easily supply as demand. And we're doing exactly that. This may be scary to established media and other businesses, but it's the way things work in free markets (which I know you appreciate), and nothing supports those better than the Net. In fact, the Net may be the most supportive environment for markets since the harbor and the crossroads.
Yes, I know it's actually both an environment — a place — and a transport system. We describe the Net as a system of "pipes." If it weren't for "carriers" and other "transport" companies we wouldn't have a Net at all, I suppose. And, of course, our protocols have a "transport" layer.
That said, the way the Net manifests in the world, and the way it supports all kinds of activities, and especially the way it allows markets to grow — where everybody is in a position to supply as well as demand, to produce as well as consume — demands appropriate conceptualization. We won't find that in the basket of words provided by transportation.
Our biggest challenge — yours and mine — right now is to keep the Net free of the regulatory assumptions that applied to the undeniably transportational nature of few-to-many communications that have been around since the FCC was the Federal Radio Commission. To do that, we need an appropriate vocabulary.
It's not hard. We have citizens rather than consumers. We have essays and posts instead of content. If you think for a moment before using just those two terms — "consumer" and "content" — and substitute words that make sense in terms of place, you'll be right on track, without changing the real subjects of your conversation one bit.
Thanks for listening. Obviously, I'd love to talk more to you about it.
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