I am fortunate to be losing my sight in the 21st century (we'll all die deaf, dumb, and blind if we live to be old enough--but, having been born with degenerative myopia, for which there is no cure, I have a head start on the latter).
I say I am fortunate, because I have unfettered internet access: I can listen to the music I like and search out and read about what interests *me,* whether the topic be something pertaining to a hobby or newsworthy events.
The latter is particularly important in our current troubling times: I long ago lost faith in the perspective or "content" offered by traditional U.S. media. Now, with modern search engines, I can totally bypass those media and, effectively, become my own information hunter-gatherer. True enough, not everything one reads--whatever the source--is true: one always needs to engage one's critical faculties (my vision is going, not my mind).
Typically, what's available to extremely low vision people like myself are talking versions of standard U.S. media stories. With the help of modern search engines and emerging technologies like Apple's "Voice Over" software--PC's have something similar (although not so flexible)--I can locate information of interest to me, highlight it: and hear the written word spoken.
The FCC's seemingly neutral stance on network neutrality will, imho, doom me to hearing about the boring and boorish lives of celebrities, which has no meaning to me. The FCC's neutral stance dooms me to not keeping myself informed about issues critical to an informed citizenry (I think it was Thomas Jefferson, centuries ago, in another context, who best addressed that issue--or, rather, what the lack of it suggested).
I am, of course, but one person and do not expect the major media outlets to cater to my interests (or even to what I consider critical to being an informed voting citizen). The existence of the internet, the emergence of the WWW eliminates such constraints: I CAN FIND information about what I consider important (and then listen to it critically and evaluate it).
Can one person's "radical"--in the sense of being different from conventional opinion--make a difference? I ask the FCC to remember its U.S. history: it has been said that there would have been no American revolution in the 18th century had it not been for the pamphlets of one man, Thomas Paine, whose words, it is said, were about the only thing that helped General Washington and his troops make it through that first winter at Valley Forge. Under the FCC's seemingly neutral stance on net neutrality, the words of Thomas Paine would not have been heard and we, as a country, as a nation, as an experiment in democracy, would not exist.
In conclusion, personally, for me, as an older individual who is slowly losing her sight--but not her ability to reason and think critically--free and unfettered access to uncensored information of interest to me--that I can then hear spoken--is essential to my remaining an informed citizen. I think though that there are also more universal issues here, as the example of Mr. Paine suggests: e pluribus unum.