The Future of the Internet As related to File Sharing and Class Struggle

An Essay by Tad Coffin (Friend of the Zp Crew)
http://mediatitan.com/mt3/resources/future_of_the_internet.php

The Internet will be the main source of all types of media in the very near future. Even in its infancy the Internet has expanded into every form of reproducible media there is. Rock paintings can be seen from thousands of miles away with a few simple clicks. Mail can be sent instantaneously anywhere in the world. Televisions, games, news, pictures, music, movies, phones, faxes, reference libraries, communities – all of these things in the one word, Internet.

Within the group of Internet users, there are two factions we will examine for this essay. Those that wish to consolidate data, and those that want to distribute it freely. One example of these factions facing off is the recording industry vs. the file sharers.

The recording industry consolidated power over the years, selling CDs that cost fifty cents to manufacture for twenty bucks. Of course, it is not really the fifty-cent CD, they sell, but the image and music behind it. Since the industry seems to have a monopoly and seems to be engaged in price fixing, the people feel they have no choice but to pay what ever price the industry sets.

At the same time the music industry is gouging consumers, they have musicians giving up all rights to their own music in exchange for cash. Not only that, but once the rights are purchased, some musicians, expecting fame and fortune now that they are “signed”, are canned, simply to inflate the popularity of other bands and reduce competition.

Much of the Internet public seems vaguely aware of this situation. When growing up in the 70′s and 80′s, kids would make mix tapes, copy tapes and trade tapes – mostly albums, but some movies. Almost no one, except for that funny screen at the beginning of VHS tapes, ever even hinted at the idea that what was going on was, in fact, theft. So when file sharing comes along, and trading tapes becomes about a hundred times as easy with the advent of file sharing networks, it is no wonder that people are stealing music right and left.

So there are those that wish to consolidate power, and there are those that would like to keep it spread out. In this case, the power is in what music people are permitted to listen to, currently based on how much money a person has.

Ultimately, the burden lies on the consumer to correct the unfair situation. If the consumer unites and organizes, they may sue the record companies for price gouging and perhaps extortion. More importantly, if the consumers and the artists organize, consumers will spend their hard earned dollars on artist-produced music instead of mega-corporate music, however cool mega-corporate music is made out to be by the mega-corporate media.

This same struggle between the haves and the have-nots is the very basis for our society. Supply and demand. It is likely to exist for a long time. Still, varying balances of power between the many and the few will exist in cycles. Ideally, power is spread thin to prevent corruption.

If we take this class struggle a mere hundred years and examine what technology changes may occur, we may devise one glimpse at what the future of the Internet might hold. Sooner or later it seems likely humans will have machines that will be fueled with raw elements that will be able to create any object. When this will happen is impossible to know, but with technology expanding exponentially, one might think fairly soon. Maybe one hundred years they will be common.

People may also have access to the web in their own brains by then as well. It would be little more than a contact lens that projects images. In the same lens could be a tiny microchip that reads brain waves. Pop one in and presto. You have become the smartest and most networked man alive… kind of.

So in the future of humanity, there are super smart people with machines that can make anything. With this machine it is just about as easy to make an orange as, say, a computer. With so much technology, and so much knowledge, one would hope that humans have evolved to be nonviolent towards one another and have all taken vows of nonviolence to create world peace.

Taking all of this into account, it seems the future of the web will be similar to it is now, at least on some levels. The Internet will be an extension of the struggle between those that wish to spread power out, and those that wish to consolidate it. There will be those that will want to own the blueprint of an orange, so that people may only buy oranges from them. These people will try to own all the blueprints to oranges. Then there will be those that think an orange is the right of everyone, and will work to make oranges freely available to all. Increasingly, the Internet will be the playing field on which this balance will be weighed.

MediaTitan.com