Internet As A Public Good

Almost thirty hours after the symposium’s kickoff I’m just getting comfortable with the vocabulary and metaphors necessary to navigate the complicated arguments concerning the Internet as a public good. The most difficult challenge arose almost immediately after personal introductions–namely, defining what we mean by The Internet. In the end, we couldn’t define it but rather could only explain it as a stack of generative events stemming from information sharing that is made possible by technical protocols riding on top of the physical network infrastructure. Admittedly, a very kludgy stab at defining the net.

Towards the end of the day it was suggested that we use the definition from World of Ends but I was only able to find a list of Internet attributes there and not so much a definition. In any case, I’m pretty happy with looking at the internet as a stack of interdependent events and properties. The problem comes when you try to define that stack as a public good.

A public good is something that is neither rivalrous (consumption of the good by one individual does not reduce the amount of the good available for consumption by others) nor excludable (no one can be effectively excluded from using that good). That’s a difficult idea to “just get” but fortunately we had Jim Bessen on hand to give us a good overview of how economists define public good. Wikipedia also has a good entry on it and has a useful matrix as well.

The real question here is “so what? Who really cares if the net is a public good?” This is important because once something is identified as a public good it needs to be may need to be treated in such a way that it is preserved as a public good. That can require, among other things, government intervention to protect it from monopolies, etc.

Not only did we have a tough time defining the internet, but it became clear that using the stack definition was problematic w/r/t identifying its “public-goodness.” Some parts of the stack were non-rivalrous and/or non-exludable but, in my view, it was never clear that the whole stack itself, the internet, is a public good. I think slices of the stack are unambiguously public good: certain software especially meets the non-rivalrous, non-exludeable criteria. What we spent a lot of time dancing around was the issue of whether or not the pipes (the backbone) were a public good. Installed by private companies at tax-payer and customer expense, the internet could not exist as we know it today without the pipes. However, if those pipes become threatened by the telcos (which is one rationale for needing net neutrality) the net as we know it would cease to exist.

I have been very skeptical of the need for government intervention at any level of the stack but am especially skeptical at the pipes level. I don’t trust either the telcos or the government to do a good job of managing the pipes and ensuring their continued public-goodness. Any glimmer of hope that I held that government might do a good job in protecting the pipes was crushed by learning of Africa’s government-run telco infrastructure.

The closest we came to agreeing on anything was that for any given part of the stack, monopoly was a bad thing–either monopoly by private company or monopoly by government and to the extent that the Internet can be identified as a public good, it must be protected from any single point of control.

Besides the event itself, it was inpsiring as all get-out to simply be able to spend time with several of the event’s attendees. I sat next to Robin Chase from GoLoco (and founder of ZipCar) and she helped me hone my thinking on networks for neighborhoods. I had dinner with a few of the other attendees this evening and was able to really gain some perspective from Patrick Ball about what it’s like to use technology and statistics to change the world. And, of course, it was great to sit down with Zak for our regular conversation of how to wrap a business model around changing the world.

Also, an interesting stat: I counted 22 Computers (15 macs and 7 pcs).