This is all about AT&T’s forgotten plot to hijack the U.S. airwaves - back in 1922.
In a brilliant post on Ars Technica by Matthew Lasar a faded remnant from almost 90 years past is revealed to remind us how little changes as we march toward our collective futures.
In 1920, nobody knew how to make money from this new technology. In fact, one magazine held a contest for the best essay on how to”monetize” radio, as we would say in contemporary jargon. It might amuse Ars readers to learn that pretty much everybody agreed that commercials represented the worst possible option. “The quickest way to kill broadcasting would be to use it for direct advertising,” warned then Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. “If a speech by the President is to be used as the meat in a sandwich of two patent medicine advertisements there will be no radio left.” RCA Vice President David Sarnoff agreed. Soon he would propose a “super power” system in which a few high powered transmitters would broadcast radio fare to the whole country, the content subsidized by the sales on radio receivers.
But AT&T had another idea—a network of almost 40 radio stations strung together via the telco’s long distance lines. They would broadcast to local areas wirelessly and share content via AT&T’s long routes.
The obvious resonance with the lobbying, shenanigans, patent wars and foot-dragging by the current rogue’s gallery of telcos, cable companies and industry associations is more than merely amusing; it shines a light on the consistent behaviour of large powerful monopolies who are, and will always be, more interested in maintaining their positions of control and profit than any publicly supported effort to craft a world that betters everyones lives. As Lasar points out in his article, we cannot easily judge how any of our possible alternate futures could have evolved were things handled differently:
What are we to make of this short-lived technological gambit? It would be easy to celebrate AT&T’s demise in this area, and counterfactual history is always a tricky game. But it seems to us that an opportunity was lost here. The Bell System’s withdrawal from broadcasting left both radio and television in the hands of one technological institution, the licensed broadcast station. The owners of these entities quickly morphed into a powerful political lobby, constantly standing in the way of competing platforms, such as cable television, satellite radio, Low Power FM, and white space broadband.
- but we can readily presume, regardless of who emerged as the victor of any such scenario, the subsequently entrenched powers exercising their political and monetary clout will rarely, if ever, have the best interests of the world at heart. Quite the contrary, as is being amply demonstrated in our current day and age of disruptive technologies, they will grasp and cling at every possible vantage to themselves even as it destroys everything and everyone around them - including themselves.
As Kevin Kelly points out in his recent post on his Technium blog, Clay Shirky nailed it when he said: “Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.” Kelly then directs us to a very good blog read from Shirky that fits with all of this: The Collapse Of Complex Business Models. As with all things Shirky, it’s concise and pithy and essential. He looks to find the way up through the falling debris of collapse which threatens to crush us and it’s a good perspective to have - but I think we also need to address how we as human beings, both individually and as institutions, continue to behave in grotesquely avaricious and irrationally self-destructive ways.
Mark Twain liked to say: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”
I think it’s time we changed the tune, danced a new dance, and kicked those old fuckers off the floor.
Rock on.
UPDATE: I just stumbled upon Susan Crawford’s blog post today comparing the current cable companies monopolies with J. P. Morgan’s control over the U.S. railways in the late 1800’s. Terrific stuff and totally resonant with all my incoherent babbling.
UPDATE PART DEUX: Seem to have stumbled across a minor geeky meme with all this stuff. PC Mag has a post today on the FCC battle against the telcos to regulate broadband - with quotes from Ms. Crawford - and it’s all in context with the same stuff I’ve been yammering on about. Cool.
