The idea that internet access is becoming a bona fide right is a concept I believe will, and should, gain momentum. I consider this an argument supporting universal internet access, with parallels to both calls for general literacy and communication services in earlier eras.

One concern I have, however, is the relative fragility and transience of the components necessary to create the infrastructure necessary to support this vision compared with communication tools like reading and postal services.

If we consider these more established technologies, they went through periods of explorative invention before evolving into their accepted forms. The underlying technologies, however, are much simpler. The amount of variation was much smaller as well.

Books, for example, achieved a stable form centuries ago. With the exception of alternatives like Incan knots, the variability has mainly been in organizing and compressing the media. By the time the printing press arrived, we had standardized on the structure of both the medium (i.e., sequential pages in binding) and the characteristics of written language (e.g., punctuation and upper and lowercase letters).

Until the advent of the internet, improvements in books came with the tiny increments we seen in any other mature technology. The same is true for the core processes and infrastructure used by postal services for the distribution of communications. We might sort our mail faster, but the distribution mechanisms are analogous to earlier times…we still hand deliver messages from point-to-point.

With the complexity of the internet, however, we see a stratified structure--from protocols to the layers of software abstraction to the bare hardware--with a great deal of change occurring at the interfaces between these layers. This complexity means we are seeing a protracted state of intense exploration with few precedents. We generally exhaust the possibilities of a new technology within a generation, leaving the next to refine and standardize…but the curve on computers is still rising.

This state of rapid evolution, of adaptive radiation (to borrow a term from evolutionary biology), is systemic.

Information technologies are producing variation across the entire spectrum. Even binary isn’t sacrosanct, as ternary and other systems reappear as we look for increased efficiency. Even our storage mechanisms and file formats are still in flux. In more concrete terms, consider how many systems ship with 8" floppy disk drives now. Or Hollerith cards, or paper tape, for that matter. Even file formats just one version apart in Microsoft Word may be incompatible with another.

The web is far from immune to this, as anyone who has tried to use Internet Explorer 6 on YouTube may attest. The standards are far from stable, as is their adoption by browser vendors, or implementation by web developers. Our interaction with technology is also rapidly evolving, from ubiquitous computing to augmented reality and neural interfaces.

It is a measure of the value we find in the internet that, despite the relatively low degree of standardization, the internet has become an essential and integral part of our society and a dominant engine of our economy. Yet, we have just started to look beyond the technology to see how our society is evolving. The internet shapes us even as we shape the internet. Our intellectual property disputes and moral panics represent only our dawning realization that the world is becoming a very different place. Furthermore, as time passes, I suspect more and more that our ability to participate fully in the world requires some degree of electronic interaction.

Consequently, the question of access for all is a discussion we must have, and the time is definitely right to begin considering this idea. At the same time, we need to be cognizant of costs that come with the immaturity of our technology.

Implementing universal internet access will be not only a massive undertaking, but one which will require continual system-wide updates at far greater frequency than those with already stable communication technologies. More than simply keeping up with technological shifts, we need to maintain viable connections with prior technological iterations to avoid losing our stored knowledge (e.g., translating data to newer formats, emulators for older programs, especially those needed specialized hardware, communities of people capable of maintaining older software and hardware).*

Universal internet access is an idea we should pursue. This concept is fundamental to the Information Age, and I feel we will all reap the benefits, regardless of our economic status. We have already seen the potential in the internet; we need to increase the heat on the evolutionary fire.

*Some of this handled by groups like the Open Source community, but passing knowledge from generation to generation is complex and time-consuming process. At the moment, a lot of information is being lost, both from media degradation, hardware obsolescence, and loss of people who know how to work with these systems.