Who are we, the Internet users?

The Hindu today featured an article that talks quite systematically about an issue that is rapidly becoming one of the most important things we, as a generation, have the chance to be part of: Defining the rules for governing the Internet.

Now that the internet has achieved an unprecedented growth and ubiquity, it is no longer the domain of the geeky, the techie or the creative. It has, like fuel, land, air and money, gone and sunk its claws in several basic aspects of the way we live our lives now. Jobs and activities that have nothing to do with technology – buying groceries or creating a tiny revolution through petitions – are becoming more and more inseparably dependent on the internet.

So, at a time where most nations are equipped and exposed enough to take this technology very, very seriously, and at a time where many developed nations have already started creating laws around it, the issue of how the internet should be governed becomes very important.

However, that is only the ‘why’. Much more important now is the ‘how’. This is being quite nicely pointed out by the article, that this decision making process must involve normal, regular, internet-users.

Take a moment to understand what that means: It means you, but not you as represented by your government or your country. It means you as a netizen, and as a free user of the internet. Ensuring that this ‘idea of a kind of people’ gets a representation at the round-table of discussions where the laws for the internet will be defined is an impossibly difficult and convoluted task. Unfortunately, it is equally important.

To see how important this is, just think about one fact that the article states: The outcome document of the NETMundial conference has already relegated net neutrality to a point of future discussion. Basically, that means that when we are asking that ISPs do not screen the information we receive, the governments of the world are shrugging and saying “yeah, we’ll see.”

So, we, the real users of the Internet, the ones who are empowered by it, the ones for whom it makes the most difference, and the ones who really want to protect its true freedom, must be part of the body that makes decisions for governance of the Internet.

Who are we, though? What does it mean, this phrase: the real users of the Internet? I’m one. But I’m also an Indian, a Hindu, and a designer. What is it that makes us all one group? What is this group called and how do you define it? The reach of the Internet is across the entire world. That means that our traditional constructs of identification and belonging such as country, religion, caste, and even the comparatively modern norms of identification such as political inclination, sexual inclination, etc. are all irrelevant here. We are every single kind of person that can exist in the world. So how do we come together?

Probably, the only binding aspect for us is our belief in the philosophy that the Internet must remain free. That it has become as fundamental as the right to free speech.

Historically, a philosophy has been able to bind people together only when it is proposed as a religion or as a political concept. The latter is weaker since it is inextricably linked to territories - political philosophies usually emerge due to the situation in a particular country that an intellectual citizen tries to improve. Once it becomes a philosophy, it becomes adaptable by other countries but it still has to move from country to country. A religion has no such bounds. Perhaps due to the fact that most religions have existed since before many of our current territories were formed, religions move freely among countries as philosophies to live by. Perhaps, with the importance and impact that the Internet is beginning to gain, it is time to redefine what one means by religion.