By on January 6, 2012

Vint Cerf is Too Modest; Internet Access is a Human Right

In his January 4 op-ed piece, Vint Cerf argued that Internet access is not a human right. While I consider Vint a friend and have tremendous respect for his achievements, I think he’s wrong in this case. Perhaps out of modesty, the man often called the “father of the Internet” is undervaluing the global network he played such an important role in developing. I fear his underestimation may be as fundamental and consequential as his belief, 30 years ago, that 4 billion Internet addresses would be sufficient — another of the rare times I disagreed with him. I believe that in the future, the Internet will be nearly as fundmental to civilized human life as food, clothing, and shelter.

Vint centers his argument on the claim that “technology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself.” This is patently incorrect. Among the most widely recognized human rights are clothing and shelter, which are among the most fundamental of human technologies. It is true that some rights are more abstract, but many are not. The US Bill of RIghts guarantees freedom of the press and the right to bear arms; technology is fundamental to both of those rights.

The UN Declaration of Human Rights goes further, in Article 19, asserting a fundmental human right “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” It is no great stretch to say that Article 19 itself makes Internet access a basic human right. Article 27 declares a right “to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.” Does anyone really believe this is possible, in the modern world, without access to the Internet?

More broadly, it is increasingly impossible to participate fully in the political life of a developed nation without Internet access. All rights related to such participation will, in the future, be meaningless without a right to access. In his modesty, perhaps, Vint fails to recognize the extent to which the Internet is transforming almost every aspect of society, certainly including the political and cultural spheres in which many of our hitherto-guaranteed rights will become meaningless without Internet access.

It might be argued that this just means that Internet access is necessary for, and implied by, some of our existing rights. The truth of that statement, however, in no way negates the fundmental importance of Internet access. The right to participate fully in society also implies a right to food and shelter, but that doesn’t mean we don’t view those things as basic rights themselves.

What’s hardest for us old Internet hands to accept is that the Internet hasn’t just been a success; it is changing the very nature of what it means to be human. Recent studies have already shown that the availability of the Internet changes the way we use our own memories — that is, it alters the very fabric of our thought, let alone our discussion and debate. Increasingly it will be impossible — and already is in many countries — to be a full participant in civil society without Internet access. If Internet access is a prerequisite to full participation in citizenship, it should certainly be viewed as a human right.

Vint, the Internet is more important than even you think!

Chief Scientist
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  • Michael McClennen

    Bravo, Nathaniel!

    The only thing I’d add to this is to emphasize that as the technological level of our society changes over time, what constitutes a “human right” changes too.

    You discussed this briefly in the case of clothing and shelter, but another example could be government regulation of printing presses.  In 16th century England, for example, the government granted monopoly status to a small group of printing-press owners, effectively granting them the authority to decide what would and would not be printed.  Although this action had many critics, at least it could be said that anyone who wanted to “get the word out” had many alternative channels to do so– town criers, handwritten manuscripts, etc., all of which were at the time well-established as means of communication.

    When the English government tried to impose much less stringent rules on the American colonies in the 18th century (the Stamp act, which was essentially a tax on printed material) this was decried as a violation of the fundamental human right of free speech.  After 200 years of technological progress, the printing press had eclipsed all other means of mass dissemination of ideas and the others had faded into obscurity.

    In a very similar way, nobody would have considered Internet access to be a fundamental right in 1995– there were many other ways of getting one’s message out.  By now, other channels are slowly fading into obscurity and practical exercise of the right to freely communicate one’s ideas to a mass audience requires uncensored access to the Internet.

  • Vint

    Nathaniel, I appreciate the intense response, but i still think there is an issue here that you may not have considered. I am not devaluing the Internet by any means. What I am saying however, is that we should not enshrine a particular technology as a human right. The right to communicate (speak, hear, write, read) is vital. Any particular way to do that is an enabler. You mention clothing. You would presumably agree that, for example, a formal black tie outfit is not, in itself, a human right. It IS an article of clothing, and clothing is, by your post, a human right. But what we care about is the clothing, not a particular garment, label, etc. The Internet is one of the most recent in a long skein of inventions that have enhanced our ability to share our thoughts and ideas. It is a remarkably malleable medium. But if, someday, something new comes along that is even better, will we cling to the Internet as a human right or turn to the new thing as a better enabler of the right to communicate? 

    By the way, the 32 bit address space was selected in 1973 when Bob Kahn and I wrote our first paper on the design of TCP. That allowed for 4.3 billion addresses. Computing was realized in the form of large scale time sharing systems, each one serving hundreds to thousands of users. At the time, it seemed like an amble address space FOR AN EXPERIMENT. By the early 1990s, it was well recognized that the space would ultimately be exhausted as the Internet became available to the public and effort to design its replacement began in the Internet Engineering Task Force. That resulted in a new standard format, IPv6 (version 6). 

  • Oneill3

    Sorry Nathaniel, I think Vint is right on the money with this one.

  • Anonymous

    Hi

    I’m out of the office until the 12th of January.

    In my absence- please can you contact Archana Dhankar for Social Media, Matt Ravden for Comms and Ross Jackson for Community.
    Regards,

    Justin

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