Some Consequences Of Net Subjectivity

Time: The future – sometime in the 2030s.

Place: The Remnant Rump of America (RRA) – at the capital (the city formerly known as Washington D.C.)

Subject: Things that were supposed to happen at this time, but didn’t.

Happen.

Thing One: Amazon-Stratasys was supposed to start the next step in home delivery of products with the rollout of the Amazon-Stratasys additive manufacturing system (three dimensional printers).

It didn’t happen.

Thing Two: Amazon-Rochester-Stratasys was supposed to start delivering custom printed, living kidneys to clinics for dialysis patients using the new Amazon-Rochester-Stratasys renal additive manufacturing system.

It didn’t happen.

Why?

Didn’t these things (along with myriad equally important kindred) happen?

Because earlier in the century America’s vaunted luck ran out.

(Otto von Bismarck once observed that “god has a special providence for drunks, little children and the United States of America”).

Or something like that.

Anyway, two centuries of luck ran out and the checks all got checked and the balances all lost their balance.

Which had massive political, cultural, social, scientific and survival as a coherent nation consequences.

One of the results of this chaos early on was the repeal of net neutrality.

“So what?” most folks said.

“Surely Comcast can’t screw us any worse with net subjectivity than they have with net neutrality.”

Unfortunately that viewpoint was very, very, very wrong.

It wasn’t long before the dysfunctional, post 2016 government had approved the merger of Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Fox, Disney, Century Link and Trump Enterprises.

That has led to the now ubiquitous internet product, “Wonderland Speedy Platform”: 56kbps PLUS a modem for $175 a month – paid 90 days in advance.

For the less well off there is the “somewhat slower parallel product” (a new, post net neutrality term) that operates at 28kbps, modem extra, for $150 a month – paid 90 days in advance (modem must pass standards of the Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Fox, Disney, Century Link and Trump Enterprises Amalgamation with a $27 a month surcharge for ongoing standards certification).

Those are two key aspects of why the two things, noted above, didn’t happen.

There was one big other aspect of net subjectivity.

And that other aspect was of great consequence.

Immediately after the occurrence of the “Great Amalgamation of American Communications Infrastructure Act” and its associated political log rolling and legislation – refer to the act of congress of the same name for details – a new commercial product was offered by Comcast/Trump (the name of the newly amalgamated communications/content infrastructure).

That product was called “Exfinity High Speed Zoom Zoom”.

It was designed for all “commercial enterprises not under the suzerainty of Comcast/Trump”.

Which was a rapidly shrinking list.

In fact Amazon quickly became the only one on that list.

Zoom Zoom is an offering of a maximum of 100 connections per enterprise operating at “up to” 10MBS “down” and 1MBPS “up”.

For a million dollars per connection per day.

The upshot was that Amazon never bought Stratasys, never merged with the Mayo Clinic, never developed the human organ additive manufacturing system and never developed its additive home delivery system.

In fact it went out of business in 2020, just after the election of that year.

Comcast/Trump strangled Amazon.