Negroponte switch
The Negroponte Switch is an idea developed by Nicholas Negroponte in the 1980s, while at the Media Lab at MIT. He suggested that due to the accidents of engineering history we had ended up with static devices – such as televisions – receiving their content via signals travelling over the airways, while devices that could have been mobile and personal – such as telephones – were receiving their content over static cables.
Idea
It was his idea that a better use of available communication resource would result if the information,. going through the cables was to go through the air, and that going through the air would be delivered via cables. Negroponte called this process “trading places”.At an event organized by Northern Telecom, his co-presenter George Gilder called it the “Negroponte Switch”, and that name stuck from then on. As mobile devices came about, connections were needed for the data network, and bandwidths were required and deliverable in wired or fibre-optic systems growth. It became less sensible to use wireless broadcast to communicate with static installations. At some point the switch took place, as limited radio bandwidth was reallocated to data services for mobile equipment, and television and other media moved to cable.
Influence on internet advocacy
Cory Doctorow, author and Electronic Frontier Foundation activist, described the process of the switch as unwiring. He framed this as a move away from a global internetwork, which passes through many chokepoints where data may be controlled and inspected, toward one which uses available bandwidth frugally by passing communications in a mesh and avoiding chokepoints. He and Charles Stross wrote a short story on the process, called Unwirer.The description of the switch in terms of a blend of civil liberty and technology was part of an effort to reimplement the Internet in the interests of the users, freedom and democracy.