Cerf’s position is somewhat surprising because, as even he acknowledges in his piece for the NYT, the events of the “Arab Spring” in 2011 reinforced just how powerful internet access can be when it comes to enabling dissidents in places like Egypt and Tunisia to co-ordinate their efforts and bring down authoritarian governments — despite attempts by dictators in those countries to shut down their access. Cerf is also the “chief Internet evangelist” at Google, so it seems a little odd he would be downplaying the need for widespread internet access and the benefits that it brings to society.

Cerf: Access is not a right, but it enables other rights

In a nutshell, Cerf’s argument seems to be that if we define Internet access itself as a right, we are placing the focus on the wrong thing. The ‘Net, he says, is just a technological tool that enables us to exercise other fundamental rights, such as the right to free speech or access to information — and rights should not be awarded to tools, but to the ends that they enable us to reach. As he puts it:

[T]echnology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself. There is a high bar for something to be considered a human right. Loosely put, it must be among the things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful lives, like freedom from torture or freedom of conscience. It is a mistake to place any particular technology in this exalted category, since over time we will end up valuing the wrong things.

In the past, says Cerf, we might have seen access to a horse as being a fundamental right in some way, since horses were a requirement for making a living. But the important thing to protect in that equation would be the right to make a living, he says, not necessarily the right to own a horse. Later in his essay, Cerf says a case could be made for seeing access to the Internet as a civil right — that is, a right awarded to us by governments, rather than one that exists inherently in us as human beings — but he shies away from arguing that this should be protected by governments.

One of the arguments against seeing Internet access as a fundamental right is that doing this places all kinds of potential burdens on society — including the potential costs of delivering access to millions or potentially billions of people. Although Cerf doesn’t raise this point, author and former Cato Institute director Adam Thierer makes that case in a post at the Technology Liberation Front, saying anyone who supports Internet access as a right has to answer two important questions: “Who or what pays the bill for classifying the Internet or broadband as a birthright entitlement? [and] what are the potential downsides for competition and innovation from such a move?”

What does seeing access as a right mean?

Thierer argues that not only could ensuring that kind of fundamental right bankrupt governments or societies if followed to its logical conclusion (and should it be just simple access, or is high-speed a right as well?) but that areas where things are determined to be “essential” services often suffer from a lack of competition. In other words, Thierer says, by promoting Internet access for all as a right, governments could actually wind up retarding progress by making it difficult for new entrants to compete:

[C]ompetition often doesn’t develop — or is sometimes prohibited outright — in sectors or for networks that are declared “essential” facilities or technological entitlements. That’s not because they are natural monopolies, rather, it’s because the policies that lawmakers and regulators put in place to ensure universal service ultimately have the counter-productive impact of retarding new entry.

But whether we define Internet access as a fundamental human right or simply a civil right, aren’t we taking a risk by not calling it a right at all? I think we are — and the risk is that it makes it easier for governments to place restrictions on access or even shut it down entirely (a point the United Nations made in its recent report). As JD Rucker notes in a blog post, seeing Internet access as a right is no different from seeing access to medical treatment or clean drinking water as a right. Cars may not be a right, but the ability to move about freely certainly is — and the internet is more like the highway system than it is a car or a horse.

That’s not to say governments have to bankrupt themselves to ensure that everyone has fiber to the curb by their house, only that protections and principles need to be in place that make it available wherever possible — just as we try to make housing and food available to all, not necessarily mansions and high-end restaurants. The Internet is a fundamental method of communication and connection, and is becoming more fundamental all the time, as we’ve seen in the Middle East and elsewhere. Seeing it as a right is an important step towards making it available to as many people as possible.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr users Ryan Franklin and Ray Dehler

Hi Bonnie!

You’ve overwhelmed me with thought pieces over the last two weeks and I have read them. I won’t comment on those that cover topics I haven’t thought about a lot but will on a few where I’ve been thinking for a long time about the issues and complexities.

A few thoughts on the issues surrounding teacher (and Administrator) pay (which I’ve been discussing here in connection with our local budgeting process, which is clearly broken) .

First off, I don’t believe there is a simple yes/no answer about either:

I believe teachers and their administrators are both subject to the same “80/20 rule” as every other profession (20% of the people do 80% of the work and vice versa), thus, by definition some will be underpaid and some overpaid. On top of that, i believe in some sort of a “merit pay” system based on teacher or school “performance” but the performance must, somehow, be tied to the product (educated students) produced. As we’ve discussed in the past, there doesn’t appear to be any easy way to do this because (i) student achievement results from factors both internal and external to the classroom experience, and (“subjective” evaluation,whether by peers, students or administrators, introduces bias and other factors.

On the issue of “young teachers” leaving the profession, I suspect that as many leave in frustration over a system which provides them little support and has too much emphasis on things not related to their desire to help develop young minds. On the issue of “older teachers” retiring, this may not be a totally bad thing as the new technologies, which we’ve played a role in developing, require a different mindset on the part of educators and may help weed out many who enjoyed being “the sage on the stage as opposed to the guide on the side”. For some, it very difficult to deal with the fact that the students may, in fact, have more information that their ‘teacher”….

Also adding to the complexity is that, in many systems, the career path for many of the best teachers may require that to eave teaching for an administrative position in order to progress financially. There needs to be a way around this dilemma.

The issue of compensation for “administrators”, superintendents (equally subject to the 80/20 rule) and school systems as a whole is further complicated by the fact that the funding formulas and categories used by the various entities involved in the process have no relationship to the purported “goals” of the system. In VA, schools receive dollars based on a complex formula, the primary ingredient of which is “bodies in seats” which detracts from the ability to use current technology efficiently and actually costs large amounts of money in rural areas. Example, here in Gloucester, they’re offering some “online” courses which may only be utilized by students from within the walls of the school buildings. Since one of our major costs locally is transportation…..

Let me also comment on the political disconnect between providing an “education” and spending money… Again, I’ll use our local system here to illustrate my point. Local power involves the control of money, jobs and real estate. Last year, in spite of continuing declines in student enrollment over the last decade and an excess of space in school buildings, our local School Board and Superintendent decided to reduce the number of school days to 160 (from 180) which saved ~$1.7 million, rather than closing a school building (which would have save ~$4.2 million). Since the teachers and administrators are under contracts set by the state for a set number of days, they were unaffected financially by the change. The people hurt were the bus drivers , custodians and cafeteria workers (lowest paid on the local totem pole) and those who now needed to find day care for ,their younger kids. The reason was, of course, the School board wished to maintain their control of real estate and keeping their budget as large as possible while rousing the parents to demand more money. The change was made for purely political reasons.

At “Net 92″, I remember DVH giving a talk (which someone else must have written for him) in which, after commenting on the huge gymnasiums, auditoriums, field houses, dormitories and “magnificent campuses” and their attendant costs, spoke of the fact that “unless the universities remember that their primary function is the preservation and growth of human knowledge they will be left with only empty buildings, the memories of past glories and the legacy function and powers of credentialism”. I suspect the same may be true for our K-12 schools.

Sorry if I digress but it’s a topic about which I’ve thought much and it frustrates me that the rewards have no relationship to the purported goals of the “institution”.

We ARE teaching CS in U.S. Schools. Our Scalable Game Design project has explored how to bring CS education to middle schools in inner city, remote rural and Native American communities in the USA. The results are overwhelmingly positive with an average of nearly 50% girls participating. Have a look at our results. It can be done. We even have early indicators of evidence of transfer between game design and simulation building activities. Here is a video showing some of the teacher training:

http://www.9news.com/news/local/article/202987/222/Teachers-play-video-games-for-science-

Dr. Repenning replied to this in an email