From Destination to Brain Drain
When my great-great grandparents homesteaded in South Dakota, it was a land of opportunity for them. Every family had their piece of land, a shovel and usually a large family ready to till the earth.
Rural areas were a destination because of the potential for those who had so little potential in their home countries. The population of white people in South Dakota boomed as new arrivals flooded the prairie. In 1860, less than 5,000 white people lived in the state. By the turn of the century in 1900, that number was around half a million, a 100 times bigger!
Then, something changed. From the 1900′s all the way to 2000 the population barely increased. While the rest of the nation’s population boomed, South Dakota was stagnant. Soon a brain drain was declared as young people and businesses left the state. The need for education, access to ideas, markets to sell products and find jobs and centers for manufacturing drove people away.
I followed the trend, leaving in 2001. Eight years later, I returned. I saw a new potential. With equal access to the world’s knowledge thanks to the Internet, South Dakota again looked like the prairie of my great-great grandparents. I could:
- Access the world’s knowledge on the Internet and sites like Wikipedia
- Educate myself with online classes and videos
- Sell products anywhere in the world thanks to sites like Amazon
- Produce products in my home thanks to 3D printing technology
With equal access to these resources, I wouldn’t have to leave. I could share my brain instead of draining it away. Combined with the knowledge of everyone, everywhere, I could create almost anything.
The Cycle of Optimism
Such optimism of a new era of possibility is nothing new. As Tim Wu notes in his book The Master Switch, “the Internet wasn’t the first information technology supposed to have changed everything forever. We see in fact a succession of optimistic and open media, each of which, in time, became a closed and controlled industry.”
If anything, Wu notes that the radical change of previous generations seemed even more revolutionary.
- In 1904 Nikola Tesla, one of the fathers of commercial electricity (recognize his last name?), predicted thanks to the radio that “the entire earth will be converted into a huge brain, as it were, capable of response in every one of its parts.”
- In the 1920s, D.W. Griffith foresaw from the invention of film a future where “children in the public schools will be taught practically everything by moving pictures. Certainly they will never be obliged to read history again.”
- In 1970, a Sloan Foundation report compared cable television to the advent of movable type: “the revolution now in sight may be nothing less … it may conceivably be more.”
- A character in Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love, set in 1876, remarks, “Every age thinks it’s the modern age, but this one really is.”
What happened?
In every age, these revolutionary inventions that promised to change our lives furthered the discrimination that has forced South Dakotans to flee to the cities for generations. They provided opportunity to the few (usually those in areas of resources like cities) while closing off the potential of open competition. As Wu notes:
Without exception, the brave new technologies of the twentieth century—free use of which was originally encouraged, for the sake of further invention and individual expression—eventually evolved into privately controlled industrial behemoths, the “old media” giants of the twenty-first, through which the flow and nature of content would be strictly controlled for reasons of commerce.
The FCC Hates South Dakota
This week the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposed new rules for accessing the Internet. In the proposed rules, Internet service providers (ISPs) like Comcast or Verizon could negotiate deals with content creators like Netflix, Hulu or Disney for priority access.
This basically means that a movie from Netflix or live sports broadcast from NBCSports would stream faster than movies on Hulu or other competitors. Especially troubling is that a company like Comcast who owns a majority stake in NBC, could favor its own content over that of your video on YouTube.
ISPs are excited by the chance to make more money with these special deals, but for businesses in South Dakota or anywhere else in the world trying to get started, this is the same old story.
- If our website is slower than the larger competitor who can pay for fast access, who will visit our store?
- If our new song or video can’t load on a mobile phone because we haven’t paid for fast access, who will listen or watch?
- If our non-profit wants to raise money, but our tear-jerking video doesn’t load fast enough, how will it survive?
An open Internet provides a lifeline to rural communities and businesses. Any entrepreneur can create the next Facebook, the saying goes. They won’t be able to in a world without equal access to all content, a concept known as net neutrality.
As Wu argues:
…a vibrant information economy cannot countenance discrimination at a level so basic as transmission on a public network. If the carrier is determined to capture greater profits, the carrier ought to be obliged to do so by expanding his capacity, not by charging similar parties different prices, bestowing on the favored a competitive advantage.
The Story of Bell Telephone
Shortly after Alexander Bell created the first working telephone (at about the same time a number of other inventors created the same invention), it was under threat from Western Union.
Western Union, which we think of as a way to send money, dominated communication in the United States with telegraphs, to the point that it single-handedly stole the presidential election in 1876, handing it to their candidate of choice, Rutherford Hayes (more in Wu’s book).
It tried to buy the Bell company, but ultimately was forced into a deal to abandon telephony in exchange that Bell never enter the telegraph market or offer competition to Western Union’s news company Associated Press.
Whoops. Bad choice.
Bell became the dominate telephone provider and created a subsidiary, American Telephone and Telegraphy Company – AT&T for short, to develop its long distance lines.
Rural Communication in 1900
While Bell was focused on connecting wealthy urban areas that could pay for phone service, many rural homesteaders were building their own local party line phone networks. (Maybe you had one?) If AT&T wouldn’t come to them, they would build it right were they were.
These independent phone companies sprung up with names like the Swedish-American Telephone Company, the Home Telephone Company or the People’s Telephone Company as Wu notes. As one farmer noted in 1904, “With a telephone in the house comes a new companionship, new life, new possibilities, new relationships, and attachments for the old farm by both old and young.”
At first AT&T’s strategy was to refuse long distance service to these independents. Soon, the independents started connecting their small hubs of phones to one another, building their own, not so long lines. AT&T then executed a coup d’etat. They purchased a controlling stake in Western Union, seizing total control of all long distance communication.
AT&T then invited the independents to connect to the network if they used Bell phones, paid a fee and accepted the fact their calls may not be connected to non-Bell users. Although the independents tried to warn one another from making a deal with a devil, soon, they were absorbed into the Bell system and the promise of a competitive, open telephone market disappeared.
In an ironic twist, the break-up of “Ma Bell” in the 1970′s once again opened the system for competition. In the 40 years since that decision, we have seen the industry again consolidate.
Defying or Repeating History?
We think, and hope, that we live in unique times. A time like when my great-great grandparents arrived in South Dakota. A time when we have the chance to build our ideal business and community right where we are.
Unfortunately, history shows that this hope will be snuffed out.
Unless we seize the potential of this moment to grow business and communities right where we are, the opportunity will move further away.
To defy the waves of history, we need to do two things:
- Improve your digital literacy. If you don’t know how to use the open tools available today, you won’t fight to protect them.
- Tell your political leaders you want an equal opportunity to build your business and community. You can sign this White House petition or call your representatives.
I believe in South Dakota. I believe in building a community or business right where you are. I believe we live in unique times that can contradict the historical trends.
Do you?
