Broadcast->multicast->intercast->ecocast

Broadcast

The idea of media as broadcast took hold hundreds of years ago with the Gutenberg printing press. It's revolution was to spread the words of one to everyone. All of communications technology followed that same basic pattern for the next several hundred years. What made the press revolutionary was the concept of movable type. This was a significant improvement over previous methods of printing, which involved handwritten texts that took years to produce.

The late 19th and all of the 20th centuries are about the evolution of electronic media. It should come as no surprise that of the early modes of communication, broadcast radio and later broadcast was seen as a massive improvement on existing, mostly paper, systems of information distribution and exchange. It should also not be a surprise that the law was written along the same lines. Accordingly the sections of the 1934 Communications Act addressing broadcast television, broadcast radio, cable television and later satellite television, draw heavily on ideas centered around freedom of speech and related community standards for widely disseminated communication.

Multicast

The telephone (and telegraph), of course, also evolved at about the same time. Unlike broadcast, however, these technologies enable direct communication between individuals. Both the business and legal design follow principles of "common carriage", which is not much different than how a railroad or shipping company works. Basically it says I, customer, pay you, shipper, to ship my information between points. In return you, carrier, agree to carry it and not interfere with it.

Intercast 

The Internet never really fit into the broadcast or the common carriage model. Just as the printing press revolutionized the world with movable type, so too the Internet, and in particular, it's creation and use of another form of movable type - Internet Protocol - which not only allows different types of computer networks to intercommunicate, but also the creation of new forms of programming, and thus, new forms of communication, so too the Internet spans and exceeds the outside boundaries of previous forms of technology. As a result, the law has never really known what to do with it because neither a pure broadcast model nor a pure telecommunications model fit.

A while ago my local paper, the Rocky Mountain News, which I delivered by bicycle for many years as a newspaper delivery boy, shut down. This was a sad passing. At the same time, it shows that the Internet is not only the movable type but movable printing press for the masses. I would never imagined as a kid delivering that newspaper that some day I could sit in a room at home and instantly broadcast messages all across the planet or even update them from nearly anywhere. Faced with this, and with the massive information gathering power available to anyone who uses the Internet, one might think it impressive that traditional print media survived as long as it did.

More will change, and faster. The dissemination of information, ability to include intelligence in nearly any device and connect that device (and its intelligence) to any other, will continue to revolutionize all of civilization from its most basic infrastructure to how it organizes.

In the nearer term, the Internet will continue to profoundly affect all of how traditional telecommunications - telephone company, cable television company, and mobile telephone company - will evolve. As Brad Feld points out in his blog, the Internet and telecommunications "still" (I'd have to say appear) to exist in parallel universes. As intertwined as they may seem to those inside the traditional industry, they are not.  

Next step ..

Ecocast

Actually no "cast" at all; the entire system is alive, interacting, creating, interrelating; it's no longer an Internet really; it's so much more multidimensional as is communication; there's no "casting" - but rather constantly changing and responding in relation to & with an environment that is in constant flux.   Standing still and being silent is communication.  Think about it.   Or not.