In an attempt to understand the implications of the upcoming decisions on repealing net neutrality laws in the USA, I reread Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostroms piece ‘An Overview of the Knowledge Commons’ from the Ecologies of Information week and Susan Leigh Stars piece ‘The Ethnography of Infrastructure’ to glean what kind of commons this act will change the internet into, and where it currently falls in terms of its definition of subtractablilty and excludability.
With net neutrality there has been low subtractability and excludability thus far, but with further privatization of the infrastructure it could soon become a high subtractability and excludable space. Besides the larger economic control that providers will have on the ‘infrastructural highways’, how will this changing shape of the internet alter peoples behaviors?
Several years ago the Scientific American published an article looking at how our users had adapted to internet use. The outcome that this article and others have found is there there is less reliance on other humans for information, or traditional ‘hard’ copies of knowledge, and more on the ability to ‘find’ via the internet the answer. What will the shift from users having had open range or *algorithmic* access to information and data to it being privatized do to peoples cognitive patterns of storing and accessing information? Does this tightening of access to knowledge signify that the era of individuals ‘attention as products’ use (‘If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold’) is changing?
Thanks for this, Maris! I’m really glad to see that you’re able to apply our readings to real-world contexts and current events! And yes, you’re very right that these metaphors and architectures of information systems — i.e., whether they’re commons or utilities or monopolies — could have a dramatic impact on how they fit into people’s everyday lives, perhaps even shaping people’s cognitive processes.