Remember, another future is possible
Toronto’s broadband move reminds us of the internet’s early promise
The other day, while out for a walk in some mild weather, I spotted a small, pink vehicle about the size of a case of beer making its way down the sidewalk. It was, it turned out, a delivery robot, dropping off some food to someone in the neighbourhood. It even had a name — Geoffrey, according to its makers, Tiny Mile.
I had heard about these sort of robots many times, but seeing one was still strange. One moment, I was in the familiar present, and the next I lived in the future, a world in which autonomous vehicles roam down the street delivering burgers.
It was a reminder that technology can change and has changed the world in ways both small and large. If we now have to get used to robots that drive themselves down the streets, we’ve also grown accustomed to incredibly powerful comput- ers in our pockets, a visual cul- ture enabled by everyone carrying around cameras, and a world of information at our fingertips.
Yet my encounter with a robot reminded me of how much more promise digital technology seemed to have in its early days. What is novel always feels more hopeful. Before our digital lives were so completely dominated by a handful of massive companies, it briefly felt like there was more promise in tech — it’s as though somehow Facebook, Google, Amazon and others close off our imagining other ways of doing things.
I was reminded of this recently when Toronto’s city council approved building a city-owned fibre-broadband network. Called ConnectTO, the program will use city resources to build a high-speed internet service to fill in gaps with private offerings and help to get marginalized people online.
The move was surprising, and not just because Toronto as a city tends to shy away from boldness. Rather, here was a municipal government deciding that not only is internet access a vital part of modern life, but that it had a role to play in providing it. It’s a stark contrast to the rest of our digital experience, which is entirely dominated by large technology companies and big telcos. For so many people, search means Google, social means Facebook, social news means Twitter or Reddit, and online shopping means Amazon.
Yes, there are concerns about monopolies, and governments around the world are now looking into that. But there is another issue: Big Tech’s dominance pre-empts our imagining a better form of the internet, or ways of interacting with tech- nology.
Some of what might be better is easy to envision: A way of keeping up with the news that didn’t rely on abstruse algorithms or be jammed next to baby pictures and disinformation; ways of sharing photos that didn’t, over time, devolve into online shopping malls instead of remaining places to explore esthetics; or a further role for governments that may see them take up basic services like email, calendars, or more so that people could use tech without having to make the Faustian bargain of handing over private data.
But there is also the more abstract — that we cannot yet imagine what we cannot yet imagine, and that the practical and financial domination of a handful of companies cuts off intriguing ideas, either through market power, or simply because the brainpower in tech centres is swallowed up by chasing after TikTok or some other hot new app instead of imagining a more democratic, just and equitable form of the internet.
The term is so often misunderstood, but this is part of a shift toward neoliberalism, that post-1990 phenomenon that saw capitalism make its way into everything, such that the only solutions for anything are market ones with dollar signs attached.
If that is to change, it will take more than just regulation. As with the small but significant example of ConnectTO, it will take us reimagining who and what we look to for innovation in digital spaces, and what metrics and incentives we use to measure success. Facebook or Amazon crave engagement and profits — but what if equity, access, privacy, and ease were the dominant measures instead?
It’s overwhelming to think back and realize there may have been a brief time in the early days of the internet when it felt like the web would provide an avenue for something other than neoliberalism — that people could get genuinely useful services for almost nothing, and have their lives ameliorated by technology.
Now, with Big Tech dominant and the internet as much a liability as a boon, it feels like that tiny glimmer of hope has been snuffed out — that we are back to wealthy corporations using their clout and size to foreclose the possibility of something more. And even if I can’t tell you exactly how it has to happen, perhaps in that very space of not knowing there is a possibility — that in what we can’t quite yet imagine there may be a way to reclaim a now all-too-rare sense of hope.