Internet access, while an enabler of basic human rights, is not itself a human right, says Google Vice President Vinton Cerf, Mashable reports.
“There is a high bar for something to be considered a human right,” Cerf says in an opinion piece in Thursday’s New York Times. But internet access, apparently, does not meet that threshold. Cerf calls it a “mistake” to include any piece of technology as a human right, because “over time we will come to come to value the wrong things.” He also argues that the exclusive category should be reserved for factors absolutely essential for human lives to flourish and have significance, offering as examples freedom of individual thought and freedom from torture. But, unlike those concepts, what guarantees them has the potential to change over time, Cerf says…