I’m going to take you back in time very quickly because if history is any indication, as it’s always said, then the Internet is headed right for regulation and all we bloggers will become no more than wacky hobbyists. That’s the thesis, here’s the warm up: Before today’s Internet, Cable TV. Before that, Broadcast TV (which created a WALL to lock FM Radio frequency). Before TV, FM Radio preceded by AM Radio. Before AM Radio brought people news and music and Mr. Entertainment himself, Bob Hope to the masses, it was The Newspaper and before that, really, the Crier.
Welcome, my friends, to the mid 1800’s. We’re in the United States. The Wild West is in full swing. It only lasts about 30 years and is kicked in the ass by The Railroad. The wild frontier, full of gun-slinging, cattle-thieving and pathetic dissemination of information becomes less wild when land owners sell their land to the The Railroad. Soon, it becomes impossible to pass over the wild frontier without stopping for barbed wire, ranch owners standing up for their claims by way of shotgun and heavily armed Railroad men protecting goods that travel the rails. The Wild West dies. In its place, a bigger, wider, United States still fresh with memories of The Civil War just 40 years earlier.
This new population out west (nearly 2/3rd of the US IS mid-west and out west) needs talking to, controlling and informing. What the Wild West taught information-givers is that the then current state of technology was miserable. Only ONE picture of Billy the Kid ever made it to the public and most notices were text-only. Hyper-local news from the Criers and Telegrams just sucked. No single source of information could collect information from North, East, West and South. If it could, and it did, it would be called a NEWSpaper.
Newspapers and newsletters are a little tricky to tie into this argument of a regulated Internet since the first letter given credit for being a Newspaper is actually the Boston News-Letter. Started in 1704, it comes quite early to the scene. Learn more In 1690, however, Bostonians could pick up, Publick Occurrences, Both Foreign and Domestick The publication was to be issued, “once a month, or, if any Glut of Occurrences happen, oftener.” There was only ever to be ONE issue. Learn more
What Newspapers show us is that SINGLE-source writers who can’t band themselves together or write with any regularity get crushed by organized collections of local writers. This is the ancient genius behind AOL’s Patch efforts where hyper-local news writers are collected into ONE publication. Where dissemination of information dies beneath regulation becomes more apparent with AM Radio.
A voice in a box, radio!
Radio began like blogs. In the early 1900’s, gadget-oriented young men would broadcast their record collections and thoughts and read from books and magazines to strangers. The broadcasts were made irregularly and had little reach. Then, with little precedent, 16 of the most popular broadcasters were collected to create ONE, SINGLE, regularly broadcasting station that had greater reach, a bigger audience and more content. After a brief time and loads of success, this collective was named, the National Broadcasting Corporation. NBC was born.
NBC led the way to regulating Radio to ensure that competition was difficult to create. David Sarnoff, boss at NBC, even went so far as to crush FM Radio by designing Broadcast TV stations 6 and 7 AROUND the FM frequencies so it could NEVER grow. FM Radio’s inventor, Armstrong, seeing the growing success of TV and having been mired in numerous legal battles with Sarnoff, put on his coat and hat, removed his air conditioner unit and walked out of his fourth story window in New York. Though Broadcast TV has gone black, to this day, FM Radio is stuck between 87.9 and 108.9 cycles though it’s a superior technology to AM Radio in terms of fidelity.
Those who were left behind when radio became regulated were short wave radio broadcasters. A peculiar bunch of hobbyists who fiddle with knobs and static and Morse code and antennae on their roofs. They may seem out of place, but they are today’s view into what radio looked like when it began. They chat with each other, creating relationships over long distances. They tap out messages and information to anyone who has tuned in, and in Maryland, they can get personalized license plates with their unique call signs.
Regulators of media
While I commend the Blackout protest efforts, it’s already written. Many say that there’s never been anything like the Internet and it’s so new that regulating and controlling it is impossible – BEYOND the scope of anyone’s current understanding – it’s just TOO fantastic to put limits on! That’s pretty.
Free individual expression has existed quite a while. As soon as it showed that it was a viable model for making money (through advertising), it became a rich person’s vehicle to make money. If one hundred Food Blogs can make $15 a month on average, then there’s someone out there interested in siphoning that $15×100/month to themselves. Expression creates, Greed rapes. End of story. Bloggers have done the hard work, irregularly posting updates and stories and sharing ideas and content and they have PROVED beyond doubt that there’s money in this model; this Internet thing. The end will come, as it always has, and today’s bloggers will carry on with their knowledge and appear a peculiar bunch of hobbyists who fiddle with code, modules and plug-ins and servers in their basements.
We will chat with each other, create relationships over long distances and type out messages and information to anyone who has punched in our server’s IP Address.
Good night, Good luck, and Good eating.
From 68.178.254.187
