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tech returns to private capital and control and good things
Posted on: January 18, 2020 at 12:15:21 CT
90Tiger STL
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The prices and plans are entirely market based, and accessible to a vast amount of the buying public. The industry is incredibly competitive. In every mall in America, cell phone dealers have their booths. When I was a kid we dreamed of personal communication devices that we read about in James Bond books. We imagined that they would be in our cars. But even Ian Fleming couldn't have imagined their portability or the advance of wireless communications. Nor could we have imagined that they would be a mass product, available not just to spies or the rich but to everyone.
It is highly significant that this industry is rooted so deeply in the private sector. It was not too long ago that economists and political scientists believed that communication technology must always fall within the purview of the state. This belief was the basis of the creation of the old Bell system. I can recall as a young adult that the phone strapped to the wall was the only real-time contact we had with the outside world. It was owned by the one phone company, and maintained by the government. Our right to communicate was sustained and controlled by the state. No more.
So too with the mails. There was only one way to deliver a letter or package when I was a young adult, and very few imagined that it could be done any other way. A few exceptions in the law were made and now look what we enjoy: vast choice in package delivery, with the private sector offering far more choices than the public sector ever dreamed of offering. Here again the federal government had finally permitted an exception to the rule against using any provider but the federal government. Thus a slight bit of light into darkness has brightened the whole world.
Not enough can be said about the way the web has completely reshaped the world. While the internet was frozen and nearly useless after the government put it in place for purposes of military and bureaucratic communication, the private sector transformed this creaking and poorly constructed structure into the institution that would change the whole world.
The prices and plans are entirely market based, and accessible to a vast amount of the buying public. The industry is incredibly competitive. In every mall in America, cell phone dealers have their booths. When I was a kid we dreamed of personal communication devices that we read about in James Bond books. We imagined that they would be in our cars. But even Ian Fleming couldn't have imagined their portability or the advance of wireless communications. Nor could we have imagined that they would be a mass product, available not just to spies or the rich but to everyone.
It is highly significant that this industry is rooted so deeply in the private sector. It was not too long ago that economists and political scientists believed that communication technology must always fall within the purview of the state. This belief was the basis of the creation of the old Bell system. I can recall as a young adult that the phone strapped to the wall was the only real-time contact we had with the outside world. It was owned by the one phone company, and maintained by the government. Our right to communicate was sustained and controlled by the state. No more.
So too with the mails. There was only one way to deliver a letter or package when I was a young adult, and very few imagined that it could be done any other way. A few exceptions in the law were made and now look what we enjoy: vast choice in package delivery, with the private sector offering far more choices than the public sector ever dreamed of offering. Here again the federal government had finally permitted an exception to the rule against using any provider but the federal government. Thus a slight bit of light into darkness has brightened the whole world.
Not enough can be said about the way the web has completely reshaped the world. While the internet was frozen and nearly useless after the government put it in place for purposes of military and bureaucratic communication, the private sector transformed this creaking and poorly constructed structure into the institution that would change the whole world.
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tech returns to private capital and control and good things - 90Tiger STL - 1/18 12:15:21