Net Neutrality: A Universal Blockchain Moment.
The issue of Net Neutrality is heating up in the United States. It seems to be another power grab from large corporations. In its current state, blockchain computing would be very vulnerable on an un-neutral net. However, the idea that a centralized company could determine the internet access of millions of individuals is awakening many people to various ideals that underly blockchain computer. Specifically, decentralization and the increase in power of the individual. The fight for net neutrality could be what awakens many more people to a decentralized computing future.
Current Weakness: Blockchain computing, or Distributed Ledger Technology, is an open ledger that is distributed across a network and secured/verified through cryptographic proofs. Blockchain computing operates without trusted third parties and without oversight. However, all of those operations require an internet connection. At this stage, ISPs (Internet Service Providers) could almost entirely shut down blockchain computing (30% of the Bitcoin network is hosted by only 13 ISPs and 60% of all Bitcoin transactions cross only 3 ISPs) if they were allowed to. It would definitely hinder the operations of blockchain computing efforts, and stymie efforts to decentralize data and computing power.
Trustless > Untrustworthy: Even if the big ISPs are open and allow all to connect to everything at the same rate, a suspicion of something more sinister will remain. After all, ISPs are corporations and serve the bottom line and their shareholders more than their customers. We need look no further than Google and Yahoo et al in China. Rather than serve the customers with unregulated searches, the companies sold their customers down the road in order to turn a greater profit to their (mostly non-Chinese) shareholders.
As people see that a non-neutral net interferes with the way that they want to connect, that will develop an architecture that will not allow a non-neutral net. That development will embody the principles of blockchain computing, namely: decentralized, cryptographic, and trustless.
Future Potential: As blockchain computing has become more and more popular, people have begun to see that software coded on the blockchain should be the norm for many things. In the backlash to an un-Neutral net, society will demand a similar setup for the hardware of internet connectivity. In the mid-to-long term, the standard model of centralized ISPs will change to one of decentralization.
In the 2006 revision of his book Code, Lawrence Lessig said that “when the Internet’s equivalent of 9/11 happens — whether sponsored by terrorists or not — annoyance will mature into political will. And that political will will produce real change.” The attacks of that day that gave U.S. lawmakers the political will to enact a law (the USA PATRIOT Act) that they had been writing for years, and that fundamentally changed many legal norms in the U.S. The fight over Net Neutrality in the U.S. will, I believe, be this moment and it will give many individuals the political will to change how they interact with the internet.
An un-free internet will give convince people to exert their political will to back the principles of decentralization and individual power over their information. ISPs will be forced to change, or they will be replaced, wth a system that is decentralized, immutable, and will not rely on the good nature of a profit-seeking enterprise. Lessig spoke about the architecture upon which laws are made, saying “architecture is a kind of law: it determines what people can and cannot do.” People will sour with the idea of powerful centralized ISPs controlling what they can access and how fast, and they will demand a new architecture that decentralized internet connectivity along with computing power and data storage.
A new architecture of internet connectivity will come sooner or later. Whether from adapting ISPs or from individuals espousing the ideals that underly blockchain computing, it will come.
