Should net neutrality be extended into augmented reality?

The ability to augment the real world en masse has incredible potential to shape public consensus and influence a person’s perception of a place, and themselves in it. This will take time and iteration after iteration with a multitude of problems to solve, spanning hardware, software, content, and user experience. The basis of these enabling technologies are being developed and decisions are being made today. It is like trajectory of a moving object. A minor change of a few degrees at the beginning can dramatically change the final destination. Tony Fadell, co-creator of the iPod and iPhone, and founder of NEST, asks ‘can the worst unintended consequences of the best tech ideas be designed out at the earliest stage?’

Redlining Augmented Reality

Belfast born CS Lewis once said ‘education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil’. In the United States the practice of redlining, finding its height in the 20th century, is the term used to describe the practice of denying services and lending of finance, either directly or through selectively raising prices, to residents of certain locations based on racial or ethnic geographic composition. To redline a community was to starve it from essential capital and foster segregation. Maps alone did not create segregated and unequal cities today but the role they played was pivotal, arguably in places becoming self-fulfilling prophesy.

a lesson from history, segregating our world

In an enabled landscape that manifests redlining, individuals and communities could be shut off not from capital but from information, knowledge, and wisdom. Should an enabled landscape not be accessible to all technologists and users? Equally, should those building the enabling software infrastructure not be compensated for this engineering feat?

Tech start-ups working on AR applications for certain locations could be forced into geographic internet slow lanes that could curtail their adoption. Individuals could be charged higher tariffs for accessing AR applications in certain locations of a city. A digital inequality. Certain locations within a city or region may have an underdeveloped AR infrastructure, the AR Cloud, that restricts development of AR experiences at those localities, disadvantaging people in that community. What if the biggest AR app, even unintentionally, under-served areas home to predominantly ethnic minority communities? Research has already revealed this is beginning to occur for AR game apps used by millions of people.

Internet providers could out-price startups from accessing specific locations of our urban and rural landscapes, allowing only established and larger organisations access. An initial rationale could be the increased bandwidth demanded from computational heavy AR enabled devices and applications. A false scarcity model, ironic given the infinite nature of the internet. This is the antithesis of net neutrality principals.

collectively over 10 miles of peace walls physically divide the landscape in BelfastCalifornian communal idealism

Technologists, especially those in Silicon Valley rooted in the communal idealism stemming from 1960s California, believed that a democratising force called the internet was going to empower everyone through shared information. A tremendously positive global impact by this relevantly small number of pioneering groups of people who have given the world amongst so many other inventions semiconductors, microprocessors, and bought personal computers into reality. The development of augmented platforms and technologies provides further opportunity to bring about a positive impact in the world.

Allemansrätten - Innovation and Equality in an augmented landscape

There is an understanding in Scandinavian Countries, referred to in Swedish law as ‘Allemansrätten’ which translates as ‘freedom to roam’, ‘every man’s right’, and ‘the right of public access’; specifically it is the right to access certain public or privately owned land for recreation and exercise. A ‘don’t disturb, don’t destroy’ ethos places the onus on people to be responsible, show mindfulness, respect, and common-sense when passing through the landscape. The spirit of Allemansrätten is found within the principles of net neutrality. Net neutrality represents openness, innovation, equality, and the right to access information. All data on the internet is treated equality. It does not discriminate or charge differently based on user, content, website, platform, attached equipment or method of communication.

Could the logic of Allemansrätten be introduced in an enabled landscape specifically embodying that everyone has the right to access the information of a place? At any place? No one place is discriminated against? Should the definition of net neutrality be extended to include a location aspect? A democratisation of place?

allemansratten, net netrality in the enabled landscape

Allemansrätten, an extension of net neutrality principals in the Enabled Landscape, could ensure that internet service providers and governments regulating the internet must not only treat all data on the internet the same, not only forbidding discriminating or charging deferentially by user, content, website, platform, and application type attached equipment, or method of communication, but also not discriminate based on location. The principle could set out to make AR accessible to everyone in all locations, not under-serving or discriminating against areas.

Net neutrality is crucial for small business owners, start-ups and entrepreneurs, who rely on the open internet to launch. Internet openness, investment, and innovation are mutually reinforcing – to the benefit of consumers, productivity, and overall economic growth, with it there would be inability to adopt these principles would stiffed innovation. How else would the disruptive AR businesses emerge if internet service providers only let incumbents succeed? What would happen to social movements like the Movement for Black Lives?

Does the above resonance with you? Are you helping to build this future? Please clap to show your support and together we can get the message out there.

Thanks, Chris McAlorum

Should net neutrality be extended into augmented reality? was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.