Ben Tarnoff

[Commentary] The Republican majority at the Federal Communications Commission will soon repeal net neutrality. What does this mean in practice? In a sentence: slower and more expensive internet service. To democratize the internet, we need to do more than force private ISPs to abide by certain rules. We need to turn those ISPs into publicly owned utilities. We need to take internet service off the market, and transform it from a consumer good into a social right. Access to the internet is a necessity.

[Commentary] The next American electorate will be more nonwhite, more working-class, and more leftwing. And they’re likely to demand more democracy, not less – not only from the political system, but from the economic system as well. That sets them on a collision course with elites like Peter Thiel. Above all, Thiel is an innovator. He has made his fortune by recognizing the potential of an idea long before his peers. Silicon Valley, along with most of American business, may dislike Trump. But that doesn’t mean they couldn’t someday embrace the kind of politics he represents. A Trumpist state could do much to soothe the crisis of capitalism: it could pour public dollars into discovering the next lucrative technology for the private sector while holding the line against the redistributive clamor of a rising millennial majority. Thiel has a history of making bets that pay off big. With Trump, he may have made another.

The Internet is so vast and formless that it’s hard to imagine it being invented. It’s easy to picture Thomas Edison inventing the lightbulb, because a lightbulb is easy to visualize. You can hold it in your hand and examine it from every angle. The Internet is the opposite. It’s everywhere, but we only see it in glimpses. The Internet is like the holy ghost: it makes itself knowable to us by taking possession of the pixels on our screens to manifest sites and apps and e-mail, but its essence is always elsewhere. This feature of the Internet makes it seem extremely complex. Surely something so ubiquitous yet invisible must require deep technical sophistication to understand. But it doesn’t. The Internet is fundamentally simple. And that simplicity is the key to its success.