I dare you to try and predict the internet.
Go ahead and try.
Ask your on-line guru, your broadband Jedi, your big-bucks expert consultant/friend.
Oh, they can give it a shot. Some may even give you a few good guesses. “Video chat” “Location awareness” “The Fridge.”
They may be sound rational and reasoned, and even offered from someone who told you in 2007 that Twitter would be big.
But let’s be real, no one person can really predict where this awesome innovation machine we call the Internet Ecosystem will take us.
Who saw Chatroulette coming? How many never bought the Second Life hype? Google just put Voice into Gmail.
So why the push to regulate the Internet and impose on it heavy rules in order to “free” it? Isn’t the approach advocated by today’s Washington Post a more sensible point of view?
In a realm as complex and evolving as the Internet, where the challenges vary from year to year and it is impossible to predict the direction of innovation....
The Post goes on to call for the “legislative enactment” of the Verizon-Google proposal. They worry that many of these regulatory pushes that aim to enshrine utopian net neutrality fiats would have the effect of “stifling innovation with unwieldy preemptive regulations.” So do I.
Removing obstacles to the Internet Ecosystem’s innovation should be the goal of policymakers – not erecting new impediments. We all know that bad actors in this space need to be watched and policed, but predicting its future is all but impossible and rife with the potential of unintended consequences.
After all, what salon of Internet wisdom and bastion of self-appointed broadband protectors could see something like the “Bed Intruder Song” juggernaut?