A free and open Internet....

Those wide telephone-like plugs on Internet Modems and Routers are called RJ45 jacks. They say by 2025 "every human on the planet will be on line" and I somehow doubt the Himba of Namibia or the Matses and Yagua of the Amazonian rainforest will be blogging or sending emails to Dear Editor at USA Today - but I could be wrong about that....

And with all this talk about 'keeping the Internet free' may I remind us that it isn't free now. Mine costs me $39.99 + 12% federal and provincial taxes, for a total of $44.79 monthly. But I'm aware they mean its accessibility not your monthly service charge from the ISP. But getting back to those ravishing Himba girls in Namibia, where will they find $45 or $50 a month for the costs of a connection to the Wild, Wild Web, and cooking hints on how to barbecue a water buffalo, make perfume from that red mud and animal fat and dung and God knows what else? And who will teach those Amazonian Indians about WiFi and satellite uplinks and all that good stuff? And who thinks we can sell them a new Mercedes or a fifty-foot yacht for cruising down the river in style? Problems? You bet your sweet bippie!

And all this hand-wringing and nail-biting about copyrights protections may be so much worrying for nothing. Mickey Mouse and the first bread-slicing machine were born in the same year: 1928. That makes Mickey 86 this year,
raising the question of how long can you flog a dead horse, or in this case, mouse? And Scarlett and Rhett, played by Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, didn't realize what they were feuding over at Tara in the 1939 epic 'Gone With The Wind' 75 years ago, because it's still a tourist trap on Peachtree Street in Atlanta, or so my spies tell me. But it too has been 'done to death' over those many years.

The article ends on an upbeat note, suggesting governments and corporations will realize being adaptable is important. Maybe, but not as important as the power and control they constantly crave, so I'm pessimistically inclined on that one. My experience suggests governments and corporations will interpret the importance of being adaptable as meaning using their deviousness more skillfully to separate the unsuspecting masses from their sweat-stained cash.
There again, I could be wrong but history suggests otherwise. The original income tax, begun during the Civil War, started at around 3% for average folks, and look where it is now.... or as Peg Bracken asked, "Why does a slight tax increase cost you $200 and a substantial tax cut save you 30 cents?"
That's government realizing that being adaptable is important.