Dcblanco2010's Blog

I’m always wondering what the future holds for social media but recently I started wondering what the future holds for the infrastructure that provides us the Internet and our virtual world.
Moore’s Law explains that every two years technology doubles in speed and costs divide in half, then why do we still continue to pay such high prices to receive the Internet at home and on our mobile devices. I know the price varies from mobile carrier to carrier and from Internet provider to Internet provider but aren’t we at a place where costs like these should be now going down instead of remaining the same or going up? Perhaps the technology that is being used to provide the internet through homes and satellites is completely different and it’s over my head but with the constant flow of income these companies make from subscribers and the speed at which technology is advancing wouldn’t you think things would be easier on us fiscally in this area? I mean I definitely see a difference in the speed of my Internet at home. I used to have dial up way back when people were still using AOL as a method to connect with the Internet. I’ve had T1 lines and every other type of gimmick connection that’s come out and the speed is definitely evident but why can’t the prices improve as well? When it comes to using a mobile device I’m also disappointed in how high an amount I’m asked to pay monthly just to have access to the Internet. I won’t name carriers but I do see a huge difference in how much I pay reflecting the speed of my mobile accessibility.
I simply feel like in our day and age we should have access to the Internet be a free and fast service. We’ve come to a crossroad where having this access really does provide society with the essential tools to succeed and supports our constitutional rights as citizens. We need the Internet to connect with new communities today, to form opinions and become informed and educated and even to remain employed. These and many more factors make me wonder again why we haven’t started to see the Internet becoming free in our country. I know this idea may seem a bit socialistic but it’s just how I perceive this area of communication should be. To give people the right to the accessibility of information that will allow them to become even more free as an individual hardly seems like a socialist idea to me. I guess the only problem I run into is it clashes with our capitalist tendencies to make a profit even from something that should be a free right. This capitalist part of the equation could also explain why even though the technology we use to get our information is becoming faster and cheaper, the accessibility to the actual virtual world remains expensive. I just hope the future is just as positive for our accessibility as it is for the creativity and tools that we use to connect to each other and get our information.