{"id":341,"date":"2008-07-25T17:36:21","date_gmt":"2008-07-25T21:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=341"},"modified":"2008-07-25T17:36:21","modified_gmt":"2008-07-25T21:36:21","slug":"the-routerhead-a-fable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=341","title":{"rendered":"The Routerhead: a fable"},"content":{"rendered":"

Inspired by: reading Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine<\/a> this week alongside Ludwig von Mises’s The Anti-Captialistic Mentality<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Addendum (7\/28):<\/font><\/strong> Here’s my review<\/a> of The Shock Doctrine<\/em>.\u00a0 If you want to know what I thought of the book, you should probably just read the review and ignore the dumb fable that follows.<\/p>\n

\n

I tried unplugging the router and plugging it back in, messing around with my DHCP settings — everything I could think of.\u00a0 Still no Internet.\u00a0 Hours passed, then a day.\u00a0 In desperation, I finally called the tech support number for my Internet service provider, Laissez-Faire Solutions.\u00a0 After putting me hold for an hour with Brahms and Beethoven, “Ayn” finally picked up the phone.”I don’t know what to tell you,” she said curtly, after I’d explained the situation. “Your connection ought to be working perfectly.”<\/p>\n

“But it isn’t.”<\/p>\n

“It ought<\/em> to be.”<\/p>\n

“But it isn’t!\u00a0 Look, isn’t it possible that there’s some failure on your end?”<\/p>\n

“You don’t understand, sir. There can be no such thing as a failure on our end. If a failure exists, then it must by definition<\/em> be on your end and your end alone. What is provided to your home qua<\/em> home is Internet access qua<\/em> Internet access. It follows, then, as surely as A is A, that either your router is not configured properly, or your cable is disconnected, or in some other way your own stupidity or incompetence have prevented you from getting online, a failure you now seek absurdly to blame on the Internet itself.”<\/p>\n

“I’m not blaming anything on the Internet.\u00a0 I’m blaming it on you, my ISP.”<\/p>\n

“Let me ask you something,” said Ayn.\u00a0 “Did anyone hold you at gunpoint, or otherwise coerce you to sign up for Internet service with us?”<\/p>\n

“Well, I guess not…”<\/p>\n

“Then what exactly is your complaint?”<\/p>\n

“That the service you agreed to provide isn’t working.”<\/p>\n

“As I explained previously, it is<\/em> working, by definition.\u00a0 If for some fanciful reason you think otherwise, obviously you have the freedom of switching providers.”<\/p>\n

“But all the others suck as much as you do.”<\/p>\n

“That is not possible.\u00a0 Were it the case that every Internet provider sucked, a provider that didn’t suck would have arisen and driven all the others out of business.\u00a0 The market abhors a vacuum.”<\/p>\n

“Yeah, I’ve been waiting more than a decade for this particular vacuum to be filled.\u00a0 Until it happens, what else would you suggest I do?”<\/p>\n

“Did you try going to Google again?”<\/p>\n

“I’m still getting a ‘Page Not Found’ error.”<\/p>\n

Frustrated, I decided to call the Tech-support Cooperative of the People’s International Proletariat (TCPIP).\u00a0 Karl picked up the phone.\u00a0 As I related my conversation with Ayn, Karl doubled over with laughter. “You mean you actually believe they<\/em> want it to work?”<\/p>\n

“Who exactly is the ‘they’ we’re talking about?”<\/p>\n

“All of them — the service providers, the government, even the academics who designed the Internet in the first place.\u00a0 We’ve amassed mountains of evidence that they’re all conspiring to keep the Internet broken<\/em>, in order to force people like you to sign up for expensive, exploitative ‘solutions’ — solutions no one would ever agree to under normal circumstances!\u00a0 Won’t you join us this weekend? We’re going to carouse around some rich neighborhoods and slice their fiber-optic cables.\u00a0 Maybe the fatcats will finally get it, once their<\/em> precious Internet connections work exactly as well as ours do…”<\/p>\n

“To be honest, I really just wanted to check my email and blog comments.”<\/p>\n

“This is not about the individual; it’s about the community!\u00a0 There can be no truly<\/em> reliable connections until the Internet as a whole has been demolished and rebuilt from scratch, until we’ve established a new social order on this planet where everyone is responsible for everyone else being able to get online…”<\/p>\n

“Until the millennium comes, can you put me in touch with someone who specializes in fixing Internet connections now?”<\/p>\n

“Traitors!\u00a0 Don’t you see Internet access has to get much, much worse before it can get better?\u00a0 That fixing your<\/em> connection would just be a ruse to lull you into complacency and dim your justified anger?”<\/p>\n

So what did I end up doing?\u00a0 Well, until my connection starts working again, I found this unsecured wireless in my apartment building that I’m sometimes able to leech off of, as well as a nearby cafe that offers free wireless from 10 to 4 on weekdays.\u00a0 And when all else fails I use my Blackberry, pecking out emails on the microscopic keyboard (though that connection, too, has become finicky lately).<\/p>\n

I talked again this morning to Ayn and Karl, and they completely agreed with each other that I was beyond hope.\u00a0 By focusing so obsessively on “fixing” a “problem,” they explained, I’d become distracted from the real goal: namely, comprehending a universal principle that explained why<\/em> my Internet access wasn’t working, as well as every other question that I might ever want an answer to.\u00a0 Maybe they’re right.\u00a0 All I know is, at least for now I can usually get my email when I have to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Inspired by: reading Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine this week alongside Ludwig von Mises’s The Anti-Captialistic Mentality. Addendum (7\/28): Here’s my review of The Shock Doctrine.\u00a0 If you want to know what I thought of the book, you should probably just read the review and ignore the dumb fable that follows. I tried unplugging the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-procrastination"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}