Historical Contingency, Inevitability, and the Open Internet

In communications policy most commentators believe that many developments that we take for granted were historically contingent.

For instance, if in the early 20th century telephone companies had (either by choice or mandate) allowed interconnection (so that customers of one network could call the customers of another network), we might not have ended up with a single company as the dominant telephony provider for most of the 20th century.

Another example flows from the fact that, in allotting television stations, the FCC chose to emphasize localism. If it had instead emphasized national competition, we might have ended up with more national networks, but at the expense of having regional rather than local stations.

The Internet is particularly fertile ground for historical contingency. If AT&T had not agreed in a 1956 consent decree to refrain from providing computer services, it might have dominated the field from the beginning. If a few engineers working with the Department of Defense had created their protocols a bit differently, it might be much harder to connect, and add your own voice, to the Internet. And if the government had decided to create a more easily controllable network, preventing someone like Tim Berners-Lee from adding his code on top of the existing protocols, we might not have the Web as we know it.

I think that most people take for granted that if they want to send an online message to a friend it won't be blocked, that if they want to create a new website their broadband provider won't relegate their content to a slow lane unless they pay a premium, and that if they want to access a cool new online service it won't be degraded by their broadband provider. If you think these aspects of the Open Internet are undesirable and contingent, then you may not want any FCC proposals to keep them in place. If you think these aspects are inevitable, then you may be indifferent about possible Open Internet rules. If you think they are desirable and contingent, then you may want Open Internet rules.