This is something that I started following a little while back because I found it rather interesting. If anyone has heard of this and were slightly confused, trust me: You are not the only one! Here I tried to explain what this is and why we should care about it.
What is Net Neutrality? It is a very complicated thing that was being discussed in the news a bit and was a debate that was happening in the States. Essentially, big cable companies wanted to be able to control the internet and the speed at which their customers could access different sites. They all said many things about not differentiating between websites but the public were adamant about how they would change this once the decision was made. This is a very important discussion because if the internet was biased, things would change drastically.
Can you imagine if the websites you loved all of a sudden took forever to load? Would you take the time to still use that site? I know a lot of people that probably wouldn’t. We value our time so much that things that take too long we don’t use. We would start gravitating towards the quicker websites to use our time better. The problem with this is that many companies would be able to pay the cable companies to have their websites sped up, while their competitions would slow down. A starter company would have an incredibly hard time getting their site off the ground because they probably couldn’t afford to pay the companies.
This was a huge deal for education as well. There are so many websites out there offering cheaper or even free courses to help provide an education for people that might not be able to afford college or university. My last roommate was from the states and she was working on her masters at UVic and it was actually cheaper for her here than in the USA. Education is a powerful thing and the more people that have access to it, the better. If companies could start paying for the internet, they could make it a lot more difficult for these cheaper schools to function. This is the opposite of what we need in society. I love this quote from John Green:
Public education does not exist for the benefit of students or the benefit of their parents. It exists for the benefit of the social order. We have discovered as a species that it is useful to have an educated population. You do not need to be a student or have a child who is a student to benefit from public education. Every second of every day of your life, you benefit from public education. So let me explain why I like to pay taxed for schools, even though I don’t personally have a kid in school: It’s because I don’t like living in a country with a bunch of stupid people.
Luckily for many people, the government in the USA voted against allowing corporations to own the internet. Many articles have been written about this debate and I have read some great ones and watched some great videos about this. I hope that education will soon become cheaper and more encompassing.
Good article on Net Neutrality: http://www.edudemic.com/net-neutrality-huge-victory-education/
Great video from John Oliver about Net Neutrality:
WE WON! Net Neutrality – Hank Green:
Speculations of a Student Teacher 