Increasing complexity
I've been saying here that what communications policy should do is create conditions that increase the value of communications for society.
One key way to do that is to make it possible for communications to continue to be more and more complex. Complex doesn't mean complicated. A system that has greater complexity is one that takes more information to describe. The most ordered system would be the least complex, because it wouldn't take much information to describe what's going on.
More complex communications would offer more choices of social entities to join online (a WoW guild, a Second Life business, perhaps a group blog with a well-defined boundary). Having these choices is valuable in and of itself. In order to cope with all the information around us, we'll want flexible social entities to work with that fit our local needs – it takes a complex organism to deal with a complex environment. (Think “law of requisite variety.”)
The global economy has become more and more complex with the passage of time, giving all of us more and more diverse choices of what to do and how to do it. This increasing complexity has been joined with (and perhaps has caused) increasing value.
Similarly, increasingly socially complex communications are valuable to us as humans. We're always looking for patterns and ways of working through the world. So facilitating the most complex communications – creating conditions that allow the widest variety of social groupings to emerge to battle for our attention — should be the primary goal of communications policy.
This means that the network neutrality battle is about much more than “innovation” or encouraging (or discouraging) ”free speech.” It's about creating the greatest possible social value by encouraging the online evolution of complex communication.
It's not a sound bite. I wish it were. I'll try to find a quick way to say it — something that involves restaurants and Chowhound and food delivery and New York (and maybe bings) — some pungent anecdote that brings complexity to life.