The problem is he's not technically wrong, but he is holistically wrong.
You also don't have to use electricity, gas, water utilities or hospitals. However our society has progressed to the point that these things are considered basic services now if you want to live inside of common society.
I'm not sure if he is intentionally ignoring this aspect or really is too disconnected with reality.
I say that because frankly I know a lot of people his age who don't use the internet directly at all.
I know even recently there was a exec that was being groomed for a major position at a top 5 tech co, who didn't use internet directly and had his secretary print out emails for him, that he would mark up and she would transcribe in response. It's more common than you think in the govt.
Nice way of putting it (technically vs. holistically). I wouldn't go so far as to declare anything a basic service, even something I've used almost every day of my life like electricity. I simply view it as "something that's nice to have" and therefore something we shouldn't squat down and take a huge dump on for no reason.
Context: He said this sarcastically in response to someone saying "nobody has to use Facebook."
I'd argue that the number of choices of social-network and search engines choices are about as meaningful as the number of ISP choices. If anything, Facebook/Google have a larger monopoly (by percentage) than most (or all) ISPs.
that exec is still using the internet directly. That's like saying you don't drive your car directly, because you are only using the steering wheel and the pedals. He just has a really inconvenient and expensive browser extension.
As I've gotten older, I keep thinking about that; How will I look upon new advancement and things my kids are excited about. Will I be an "old fucker", attempting to slow down progress because it doesn't make sense?
Certainly, my generation will have a different view growing up in the "internet age" but how different will we look from present day conservatives?
I hope I stay open minded for a long time and never disregard anything because it's new but only time will tell.
Ridiculous! These Congresscritters are completely out of touch!
> Nobody has to use Google
Well, you see, you can use DuckDuckGo, stop pretending Google is a necessity. (Actual Hacker News argument, by the people who are "with it" and "in touch" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13989078)
We've grown up with change and expecting change every year. This old fucker was eligible for AARP by the time AOL offered internet service. Most elderly, especially conservative elderly hold a more static mindset than those born in the modern era.
How long since the last time a major technology was invented that changed how you live your day to day? When that happened, how long had it been since the previous one?
I bet the first number is bigger than the second number.
Ask 1000 randomly chosen people 10 basic questions about a subject, work out the average score.
If a Congressperson/Senate member can't get a better score than the average of the 1000 on that subject then they don't get to vote on the legislation.
(I'm not serious..but sometimes I wonder).
I call it the "Yogi Test" (smarter than the average bear).
People who have Internet access are increasingly using it to get or keep their jobs. They don't really have a choice.
Consider the following analogy:
Nobody has to use a car. They can just stay home and be unemployed. Especially in rural Wisconsin. So when carmakers install tracking devices into that car, they can use your movement data as a way to make money. If you don't like it, walk or take a bus.
I mean hey, nobody has to participate in a democracy. It'd be so much more convenient if I could just, like, dictate what would happen, and they had no way of looking it up
The internet's such a fad I'm just so sick of hearing about, let's just let companies buy it up and kill it off
Conservatives have one hammer for every nail: the free market. The invisible hand always does better than government. Deregulation is always good. (There are three exceptions to this with many conservatives: free trade is bad, army is unlimited good, fossil fuels must be subsidized).
That's what leads to such statements. It doesn't matter how ridiculous a corner they will paint themselves into. They can deny that basic supply and demand exists. When backed into a corner they just exclaim "socialism doesn't work! Look at USSR!"
(And then together with neocons proceed to sanction and undermine more regimes to make sure they are right.)
It's kind of a religious conviction. Capitalism is the unofficial religion of the USA the same as Islam is in Saudi Arabia. Don't believe me? Try to say publicly that capitalism has faults and your criticism of capitalism itself would be instantly deflected to something else, or else you will be quickly ostracized.
This religion will soon come up against the hard facts of automation causing demand for human labor to drop, undermining the conviction that wages will always be the primary way for people to get money.
So many of the problems surrounding this would be fixed with:
1. More representatives per capita
2. Shorter (and limited max) term limits.
There's nothing wrong with what he's saying here. The problem is that his view, though representative of some portion of the population, are over-represented due to the lack of representation in general.
So as automation and AI are predicted (and to some extent, already have) to displace a lot of jobs over the next few decades, I feel that making the internet more accessible is America's best interest, as it may be able to make education MORE accessible through free online resources like Khan Academy, YouTube videos, downloadable textbooks, online study groups (Slack, forums), so that the average American has a better chance at switching careers, along with being more informed about things like the environment, their personal health (physical and mental), and government resources in their local area that might help them.
In my city (and I'm sure it's the same around the U.S.), libraries are packed because they provide internet and a safe, free space to learn.
I'm confused about what data the ISPs actually have access to.
It seems over 90% of my online activity is now https. That means they have access to very little that can be useful to an advertiser. (I suppose they have my DNS lookups, but it's trivial to change DNS to a company you trust.)
It's interesting how universally hated ISPs are. Google and Facebook, from a technical standpoint, are much scarier in what they know about everyone on the internet. Yet few people seem to care that they use our browsing and search data to target us to advertisers.
> I suppose they have my DNS lookups, but it's trivial to change DNS to a company you trust
That won't solve it, there's still what's called "passive DNS". With passive DNS someone between you and the internet (in this case your ISP) simply tags and stores all DNS packets it sees before forwarding them to wherever they're supposed to go. From that they can determine which domains you are resolving even if you aren't using their resolver. They can also block DNS requests, and even send you their own responses. That last part doesn't matter as much as you'd think: they can't just redirect you to an Ad server because they wouldn't be able to authenticate the SSL connection.
I should also add that this DNS snooping has legitimate and ethical uses. A big reason to do this is to deal with malware. Often malware uses certain domain names as their command and control server. If this malware has spread far and wide and could affect a lot of your customers, you can black hole the domain name so that, if you have the malware and it tries to resolve mycommandandcontrolserver.biz, the ISP intercepts the request and send back an NXDOMAIN, or have it resolve to 0.0.0.0, or resolve it to a particular server that simply closes every connection it gets so you can figure out which customers are affected and contact them.
They can also get the hostname for https connections the initial SSL connection sends the hostname in plaintext (called SNI). But getting that requires reconstructing the TCP stream for connections in real time, and that's just not very practical at ISP scale.
I'd suggest that companies, individuals and interest groups file suggestions (similar to amicus curiae) if they want their voices heard. Congress shouldn't be influenced by outside money.
This is probably mostly an age thing. I mostly agree that "nobody has to use the internet" because for most of my life there was no internet, at least no consumer internet, and I have personal experience living a happy, productive life quite well without it.
Many people over 60 today really don't use the internet much if at all.
A younger person who has never known life without a mobile device and ubiquitous internet might well have a different view.
Argued that way, nobody has to use phone, digital camera and a whole bunch of other things. Part of the job of being a law maker is to understand the needs/interests of all people, not just old people because the lawmaker happens to be old. A sensible person would find out the usage of the internet, its impact, privacy etc before making (even though he himself might not use) a decision.
I don't drink, but that doesn't mean I should vote down any bill that has anything to do with alcohol without understanding what it is about, right?
> Argued that way, nobody has to use phone, digital camera and a whole bunch of other things. Part of the job of being a law maker is to understand the needs/interests of all people, not just old people because the lawmaker happens to be old
It's not just because the lawmaker happens to be old, but also because voters happen to be old. He's a Congressman, so he has to get reelected every other year. Half of those elections will be midterm elections. Almost twice as many voters will be 65+ as will be 18-29.
I also grew up without internet but the definition of things you have to have to function in society evolves all the time. 20 years ago you were fine without internet but nowadays it's much harder to do without. 150 years ago you were perfectly fine without car, today less so in many areas. Same for phone, access to doctors, electrical power, running water, grocery stores and so on. Society evolves.
You also don't have to use electricity, gas, water utilities or hospitals. However our society has progressed to the point that these things are considered basic services now if you want to live inside of common society.
I'm not sure if he is intentionally ignoring this aspect or really is too disconnected with reality.
I say that because frankly I know a lot of people his age who don't use the internet directly at all.
I know even recently there was a exec that was being groomed for a major position at a top 5 tech co, who didn't use internet directly and had his secretary print out emails for him, that he would mark up and she would transcribe in response. It's more common than you think in the govt.