Source: foxypar4, flickr.com. Used with permission.
This past week, I gave a keynote speech in Rome on Network Neutrality. At lunch afterwards, I had a lovely conversation with Italian researcher Stefano Merli. He presented me with the following paradox: The theory of Network Neutrality is that we impose rules to ensure openness and, more importantly, freedom of use on the Internet. However, the imposition of a rule, by its very nature, limits freedom. Thus, we are limiting freedom to ensure freedom.
Insight: It’s an excellent paradox. The only resolution which I could come to is that the regulator, on behalf of private citizens, imposes rules on network operators. While restricting the operators’ freedom affords private Internet users greater freedom of use.
So, I wonder if this is a ‘transfer’ of freedom from one group to another, how do we know that we have the correct set of rules. Then I thought of the weight of cows. What can the weight of cows tell us about Network Neutrality? You might think I have gone mentally ill. Indulge me for a moment. If asked what the average weight of a cow was, you could venture a guess. The quality of your guess, i.e., how close it was to the actual average, would be a function of your life experience. If you grew up on a dairy farm or work in livestock, your guess probably would be closer to the average value than mine, because I grew up in Manhattan. Now, if I asked a 100 people, or 1,000, or 10,000, then the average of those responses would tend to converge on the actual value. This is the “Wisdom of Crowds“. One of the most important lessons I learned in business school is one can be smarter than anyone in the room, but he can’t be smarter than everyone in the room. Vox populi, vox Dei.
Similarly, the set of Network Neutrality rules imposed by the regulator is, in essence, one person’s guess. If we have thousands, or tens of thousands, of people ‘guessing’ at the appropriate rules – a market – then we will eventually converge on a correct value.
[...] to keep the Internet neutral, or just to manage the exceptions? (Again see Ken Carter’s blog: http://kennethrcarter.com/CoolStuff/2009/05/stefano-merlis-net-neutrality-paradox.) Sir Tim Berners-Lee recognizes this paradox on his blog post [...]