[oblio]

> The internet was doing fine for decades with minimal involvement from governments - why change things?

Things change on their own. The internet used to be accessed by highly sophisticated and technical users. Now it's mainstream.

And all mainstream things follow two basic rules:

1. Everything move at the speed of the slowest person.

2. The weakest members of the community need to be protected.

[shady-lady]

> The internet used to be accessed by highly sophisticated and technical users.

Quaint but that's simply not true unless you're talking pre 90's. No point in kidding ourselves.

The internet was accessed by people who accessed the internet. They popped a floppy/cd in a drive and followed instructions. They then opened a browser and typed a url.

Nothing sophisticated about it.

Nobody was creating electrical signals by hand and sending them down a home made wire.

[oblio]

> Nobody was creating electrical signals by hand and sending them down a home made wire.

I think we're talking about completely different levels of sophistication.

You're talking about electrical engineers vs regular users, I'm talking about levels of functional literacy... Don't forget that the average Joe/Jane has a level of functional literacy of somewhere around mid to late secondary school.

The earliest internet adopters were universities (so a entirely different level of education) and after that it was middle or upper class people who could afford a PC and an internet connection plus had the interest in doing so, considering that PCs until Windows 95 were either too expensive or not very user friendly.

The current internet, thanks to mobile devices and cheap, ubiquitous internet access, is truly accessible universally.

[shady-lady]

> highly sophisticated and technical users

I'm pointing out that referring to those users as the above is simply not true.

As you then point out, wealth(direct or by proxy) was the determinant in whether somebody had internet access, not high technical sophistication.

And wealth in and of itself is not a signal of high technical sophistication.

[TeMPOraL]

It wasn't wealth, it was interest. There was a period where the Internet (or PCs in general) were more of a curiosity than anything else, and you had to have some motivation to jump over the complexities of operating a computer and going on-line (not to mention some motivation to buy a PC/get your parents to do it). It served as a natural quality filter for a while.

[buboard]

> Nothing sophisticated about it.

Hmm no. You wouldn't even talk about it to avoid sounding like a weirdo.

[TeMPOraL]

3. Everything is dominated by people trying to make money, pushing out all other values.