Net Neutrality: Silicon Valley’s Whiz Kids Are Stumped

 

The whiz kids of Silicon Valley are celebrating the GOP’s apparent collapse on Net Neutrality. The New York Times exults: “the little guys appear to have won.” It omits that the “little guys” are some of the richest people in America, and–by their own lights–the smartest. The odd thing is that the nerds who have an app for everything seem to be unable to explain what Net Neutrality actually is, and why we need it. Case in point: Tuesday’s epic failure by Tumblr CEO David Karp on CNBC.

Karp, who was brilliant enough to build a company that he sold to Yahoo for $1.1 billion, could not answer the most basic questions about Net Neutrality.

He could not explain why the government needs to regulate the Internet’s traffic to save it from the success that has enabled him, and others like him, to become wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.

He could not explain why a company like AT&T, which has invested in the infrastructure to make the Internet much faster and more accessible, should be barred from charging prices that would allow it to recoup its investment from those willing to pay.

Amidst the incoherent verbal muddle in which he entangled himself, Karp managed to offer two somewhat intelligible arguments: one, that consumer demand for faster Internet speeds would make up somehow for the fact that established companies would no longer build the infrastructure to carry the traffic; two, that those who disagreed with him were lying.

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