Speaking of ideological disagreements
While you're reading that Barlow (you are reading Barlow's Declaration, aren't you?), look at what Paul Treanor said about Internet ideology:
Net-ism is wrong because it is coercively expansionist. There is no inherent or inevitable technical or historical trend to a single communication network. On the contrary: never before in history, have so many separate networks been technically possible. Linking all networks together is a conscious choice by some people, a choice then imposed on others. The logic is identical to that of colonial governments, which forced peasants into the agricultural market, by imposing cash taxes. (To pay the tax, the peasants had to sell cash crops such as sugar). This logic says in effect: 'no one is free to stay outside the free market'. Today, not just governments, but business, social movements, intellectuals and artists, all want to impose the Net. This broad movement is obviously more than profit-seeking (and a non-profit Net would also be wrong). It is an ideological movement seeking ideological imposition. That imposition itself, the universalism, the expansionism, their involuntary nature, the basic unfreedom to exit - that is what makes liberal structures wrong. That applies to the free market, and it applies inherently to the Internet.
I don't think hyperliberals are all so fond of colonial taxes (I know some people who would disagree), but "no one is free to stay outside the free market" makes sense in liberal context. The free market broadly conceived is considered a neutral context in which all kinds of voluntary economic interactions exist, and in which different kinds of interactions compete for mind share (much like the "marketplace of ideas"; I wish I could think of all the different writers who've commented on how interesting it is that a marketplace is used as a metaphor for free speech). In that sense competition and retail of goods are only some of a large number of possibilities which might be present; in that sense people who decide to arrange their economic affairs in a different way, like a commune, are not opting out of the free market but only out of certain transactions.
Many members of the Internet community would argue that there is no architecture, but only a tradition, which was not written down for the first 25 years (or at least not by the IAB). However, in very general terms, the community believes that the goal is connectivity, the tool is the Internet Protocol, and the intelligence is end to end rather than hidden in the network.The current exponential growth of the network seems to show that connectivity is its own reward, and is more valuable than any individual application such as mail or the World-Wide Web. This connectivity requires technical cooperation between service providers, and flourishes in the increasingly liberal and competitive commercial telecommunications environment.
The key to global connectivity is the inter-networking layer. The key to exploiting this layer over diverse hardware providing global connectivity is the "end to end argument".
[...] It is generally felt that in an ideal situation there should be one, and only one, protocol at the Internet level. This allows for uniform and relatively seamless operations in a competitive, multi- vendor, multi-provider public network. There can of course be multiple protocols to satisfy different requirements at other levels, and there are many successful examples of large private networks with multiple network layer protocols in use.
(Brian Carpenter, RFC 1958, "Architectural Principles of the Internet", June 1996, section 2: "Is There an Internet Architecture?"; emphasis added)
Similarly:
Encouragement of cooperation between networks: Connectivity is its own reward, therefore network providers are rewarded by cooperation with each other.
And then of course
The nature of people and their use of networking technology provides a strong natural drive towards universal interconnection. Because the flow of information on the Net transcends national boundaries, any restrictions within a single country may act to limit the freedom of those in other countries as well.The true value of the Internet is found in people, not in technology. Since each new user increases the value of the Net for all, the potential of the Net will only be reached when all who desire can openly and freely use the Net.
(Nathaniel Borenstein et al., "One Planet, One Net: Principles for the Internet Era", in CPSR's One Planet, One Net Campaign)
Connectivity being its own reward is too generic for Nortel, but not because Nortel agrees with Paul Treanor, just because connectivity being its own reward isn't exciting enough as a business agenda.
