As a science fiction writer, it is not my business to make people behave. It is my business to make people imagine.In his novel, Islands on the Net, Sterling descibes one possible vision of the Internet of the future as a lot like television, another former wonder of the age. "The Net was a vast glass mirror. It reflected what it was shown. Mostly human banality". Without assertive educational involvement in NII development, Sterling foresees that the commerical sector will target children with what he calls "their full enormous range of on-line demographic databases and privacy-shattering customer-service profiles". He points out that we don't want corporations peering at our children through a cyberspace "one-way mirror" and he is fearful that carriers may control content that flows through the NII.
As a science fiction writer, representing the counterculture movement of cyberpunk, Sterling is also concerned about censorship over content on the net. He points out that twenty years ago his books probably would have been removed from library shelves as being subversive, too violently and realistically futuristic. Diversified, equitable content on the net will be difficult to achieve when single companies are allowed to control both carrier and content, thus creating a danger that these carriers may give preference to content they manage.
Sterling would believe that ensuring content or services are provided that respond to the largest information needs of the greater community is probably one of the greatest challenges when shaping the NII. An open market for content is even more important than an open market for carriers. Therefore, a competitive model that would determine content based upon quality of information not marketing resources must be supported. This would ensure that individual publishers would be able to have a competitive presence with large information providers. The public would then benefit from the opportunity to be exposed to a diverse marketplace of ideas. Sterling advocates for the importance of ensuring this diversity of content so the web continues to have a rich resources of democratic information that enable users to segment themselves according to common interests, not gender, race, socioeconomic information as targeted by commercial carrier.
