skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Consider the discussion I occasionally address as not only an Internet user but as a marketer and ad-guy: the anti-consumerist demonization of Internet users. I first mentioned it in the post about “Data Hogs” here.
Cruising for books at the county library, I picked up a new volume for Young Adults, Should the Internet Be Free? Now that I've absorbed it, I recommend it to you for background reading.
I wasn't aware of the series from Greenhaven Press (which is part of Gale). This volume delivers just what the At Issue series is supposed to deliver:
...a wide range of opinion on a single controversial subject. Each volume includes primary and secondary sources from a variety of perspectives ― eyewitnesses, scientific journals, government officials and many others.
I presume you have opinions on the subject of Internet access and usage, just like I do. But I hadn't made a study of the subject myself; well, since Big Media's propaganda effort landed in front of me, I'm trying to catch up. Should the Internet Be Free? Is a good place to start and it's punchy quick reading.
Now a word about the time span of the articles selected by Book Editor Roman Espejo. Though this volume has been published this year, some of the articles go back a bit: 2007, 2003, even 2000. In the life of the Internet, a decade's a century so several of the articles are dated. Some companies mentioned haven't been in business for quite a while, having be eaten up by larger outfits. Government initiatives have come and gone.
Nevertheless, historical perspective is a key strength. So I am (age-wise, at least) way beyond high school but it's never too late IMO to learn more. Especially about a socio-technical phenomenon that's grown into an essential attribute of civil society ― and marketing in the 21st Century.
BTW, Gale books of any type are expensive. You can order this book on Amazon but better yet see if your library has a copy. Mine did.
The headline of an article by Ryan Kim of the San Francisco Chronicle is “Data hogs on phone networks could see meters on troughs.” To be fair, the term data hogs doesn’t appear in this article; the headline may have been written by someone else.
On the other hand, data hogs appears over and over – like mushrooms overnight – in article after article, such as the one by Matt Richtel in the New York Times. And on AOL. And the Christian Science Monitor. And Yahoo. And US News and World Report.
Don’t believe any of them – data hogs is anti-consumerist propaganda pure and simple. The massive media companies, chief among them being ATT, just want to charge you more for Internet access and bandwidth use.
Maybe you’ve been accused of being a…gas hog. Or a road hog. It is all about a “fair share” of some commodity presumed to be in short supply. It is almost always false. It is false in this case, too.
Data hog implies that data itself is in short supply – sounds provocative but untrue. There’s plenty of data to go around. (I’ll give you some of mine.) Bandwidth? There’s a lot of that as well. No, in this case, I suggest that media companies see all that “freeloading” as missed profit-making opportunity and they want more of it. They are greedy pigs, notwithstanding their supply of phone and interconnect services.
American companies such as Apple have made the world more accessible and more open than ever before, through science and technology that gives more people more access to data. We revel in it. It’s not just data that wants to be free – it’s access, too.
It doesn’t matter if talking heads say differently. In the NYT article, Edward Snyder, an analyst with Charter Equity Research, says: “The biggest data pigs in the world are the iPhone guys.”
I beg your pardon? We (technologists, marketers, advertisers) have spent decades creating a global culture which lives on the free flow of lots of data and which wants more of it all the time. In theory, it’s alright to charge for it.
But not to overcharge for it. That would make you, ATT, a money hog.
So what do you do? If you feel [a] trapped by these data-pig threats, move your data phone sub to other carriers – presuming they don’t all jump on the bandwagon. Or [b] keep checking your favorite social media for a grassroots movement against swinish profit-making – then join the fight.
Do not, however, believe in media corporation propaganda about data hogs.
PS: I may have lost a bit of my normally even temper on this particular issue. But some of my best friends are data hogs – see the attractive engraving of us all praying for more bandwidth, above.
