alittlenonsensenowandthen: Net Neutrality and Miss America 1994

I turned 50 this year. You only turn 50 once. You also only turn 40 once. You also only turn 30 once.

Now that the issue of “Net Neutrality” has come up again recently, I want to write about the time I turned 30.

How does my 30^th birthday, 20 years ago before the Internet truly existed, have to do with “Net Neutrality?” I will explain.

Twenty years ago my friends Alan and Audrey offered to throw me a 30^th Birthday Party. I’m all for anything that showers attention and, potentially, gifts on me so I jumped at the chance. With any party they wanted to know what I would like in terms of festivities. The only thing I really wanted was a pinata filled with little bottles of alcohol (preferably in plastic bottles) for everyone to enjoy. I can’t recall any other requests I made...except when I got there.

Mix these....

...with this. Fun ensues.

You see – Audrey and Alan live in a nice house in a good middle class suburban neighborhood. They had, or possibly still have, a hot tub, a nice back yard, a good deck and large storage garage. At the time, in 1994, they also had a satellite dish. We’re not talking about a dish about the size of a large pizza but a DISH about six feet around. These dishes were on mounts upon which you could alter the direction of the dish to pick up the various satellites floating around the sky. If you had one of these dishes you, literally, had access to thousands of channels of programming. There was also an enormous guide that would be published telling you where to point the dish to get whatever channel you sought (I searched for an image of one of these guides...could not find one).

When I arrived for my festivities, I asked if they were watching the “Miss America Pageant.” I don’t know why this was of any interest to me. Who cares who won (Miss South Carolina – Kimberly Clarice Aiken). But what made this fun was simply the fact that Alan and Audrey could get the live feed from some other part of the country. I was completely fascinated by this. That you could ACTUALLY watch something live and not “tape delayed.”

Miss America 1994. Pretty.

Soon after I found myself wandering down to the local bar to watch the Mariner’s play from home (when the games never used to be broadcast) because the bar would pick up the feed back to the other team’s town (probably without the expressed written consent of Major League Baseball).

I wanted, nay, begged to have a great huge satellite dish to enjoy shows like “Saturday Night Live” actually, you know, LIVE. Cable was quickly becoming a tad stale and I wanted the freedom of just looking for channels around the globe. Pick up that feed, watch things live, enjoy the power of the dish.

Until....

It became regulated. Next thing you know the “Dish Network” people showed up and the freedom of the satellite became just a different kind of cable network....with a dish instead of cable.

Little Dishes

When I would investigate the possibility of still having access to live TV I would ask the nice salesperson: “Does this dish thingy get live feeds from around the county and the world?” “Uh...yeah...I’m pretty sure it does.” (note: it didn’t).

This is what I fear will happen if we lose Net Neutrality. That it will just become another service to be regulated and paid for and we won’t get what we want...at all (unless you’re willing to pay for it).

They want your money and they're willing to regulate the internet to get it.

So does Verizon.

And this.

I truly feel that if the large corporations get their way you’ll be paying for bronze, silver, gold levels of internet service – forced to go to only a certain number of web pages, forced to view their advertising for their paid-for sponsors and whatever freedom and enjoyment we had will be kicked to the proverbial dustbin of higher profits and lower service.