Chinese Or Indian Web? No, AT&T Web!

Imagine, if you bought a house on an island, but had not ways of communicating or travelling outside it! Does it sound scary? Be scared, our virtual world is heading for it. Nitin Desai, chair of Internet Governance Forum (IGF), has warned about Balkanisation of the Net (via Shunya).

There are two issues at hand, one is what I call localization of Net and the second is more popular - Net neutrality - that can lead to Balkanization.

Localization of Net

As the Net was being used more and more for local services, the need of using the English language in non-English areas was a hurdle in its acceptance. In fact, in countries like India and China this is often cited as one of the core reasons for Net not accepted by the common man. The common man here is going to avoid something that does not talk his language.

So we do have localized content. Many products like desktop managers (KDE), Mozilla Firefox, OpenOffice can be localized and they have grown in popularity. However, on the Net, the user still has to know English, specifically the Latin characters, to visit a website. This is a little uncomfortable for the non-English guy especially when the website he wants to visit is in his local language.

This issue might have some political strings attached to it, however, it is true that using the Net today does impose the restriction of knowledge of the English language. One solution might be to internationalize even the domain names, which is being discussed. But China is not happy with it and now can threaten to partition the Net by creating its own Chinese island - the Chinese Web. And soon there will be an Indian Web or a Russian Web.

We are too worried about the programming languages that work for Net, we should be more worried about the languages that the user speaks. Unless the user is comfortable, from aspects, uncomfortable situations will keep arising, whether there are more Chinese pages or not. Even if we cannot solve it immediately, it has to be acknowledged and addressed.

Net Neutrality

This beans have been spilled out and the issue has been brewing for long enough to start getting bitter. There have been discussions for and against it. Like some say, it might have a good effect, but the idea of letting someone filter content I want to see by their sensibilities is threatening to my freedom. Once their sensibilities stop working I start suffering. Even if there are good dictators, dictatorship is still harmful to freedom. This can result in another kind of Balkanisation, where the islands are controlled by the business interests.

Epilogue

Both these issues are killing the basic principle and idea behind the Net. Vinton Cerf said:

The Internet is based on a layered, end-to-end model that allows people at each level of the network to innovate free of any central control. By placing intelligence at the edges rather than control in the middle of the network, the Internet has created a platform for innovation.

Internet enables dissemination of ideas, across physical, linguistic or racial boundaries. Control, either fueled by political or business interests, is going to kill its basic purpose.

Today, we have one Web. It makes me easier to put up a website, contribute to another and express myself, my ideas to someone else sitting miles away. Tomorrow, we will have multiple Webs, I will have to take permission or pay every time I want to publish something. Then the technology, the ease it provides or the advancements will not matter. The top content will always be by someone who has more money and my choice will be determined by someone else’s personal preferences. I don’t want that tomorrow.