[12690] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Infobahn as Theater (long)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (William C. Hulley)
Thu May 26 09:13:14 1994
Date: Wed, 25 May 1994 08:23:07 -0700 (PDT)
From: "William C. Hulley" <wch@shell.portal.com>
To: com-priv@psi.com, leri@pyramid.com
So, if the convergence is a crock, why is the idea of building the Infobahn,
now being defined as "a big wide fast limited access network of service
givers and takers", such a compelling notion for so many people? Why do
we, in spite of the easy logical arguments, the historical facts, the basic
economic tenets that suggest that a monolithic convergence is a witless
idea at best and a wasteful and distracting bucket of bilge water at worst,
still find corporate managers, politicians and activists warily circling
each other like Hulk Hogan and the Grand Avenger (with an adoring press
tagging along and documenting the blow by blow in jargon laden prose) in an
ever shifting tag team match for control of the Information Superhighway
construction program?
Mostly because our friends in Washington, various big company managers
and a small cadre of dreamers all believe that they can advance their own
surprisingly well aligned agendas by convincing you and me that building
the Infobahn requires big bucks and big risks and consequently, has to be
"controlled" and "managed" for the good of all of us. Which, when you
think about it, sounds a great deal like believing that good and evil battle
for worldly dominion through the pairing of large, masked muscle men
every Sunday afternoon.
Studio wrestling, that uniquely American extravaganza, provides a clue or
two about how these folks have decided to convince us that "managing" the
information revolution, in all its incarnations, should be left in their
undeniably collective hands. The convergence, which in this manifestation
is called the Infobahn (catchy nickname, that), is the manly mat in this, the
latest struggle in which the forces of good/evil - the seekers of universal
and controlled access - battle the forces of evil/good - cash flow seeking
corporate management in all its costumed forms - for command of
America's electronic soul. The same theater that underlies the struggle
within the ropes on any given Sunday is a fitting model for the Infobahn
debate.
When you are watching the wrestling match for control of the Infobahn, it
really doesn't matter whom you root for; in the carefully choreographed
bodyslams that form the heart of today's debate (and deep in your beer-
stained, wrestling watching heart you already know, but do not admit, this
fact) the winners and losers are preordained by the debaters themselves.
The only suckers, and boy oh boy, Hulk and the rest of the guys hope we
will *stay* suckers, are the rubes watching the match and rooting for their
favorites as if the outcome wasn't already known. The winners are picked
before the match because all of the wrestlers win when any of them win
and the major stakeholders in the convergence debate (outside of you and
me, the individual producer or consumer of information services) want the
same advantage. You see, our Infobahn Hulks and Avengers all benefit from a
monolithic, well controlled, yes, *converged* digital network no matter
who "wins" the debate.
In the ring, the good guys can't exist without the bad guys and the bad
guys, yup sure do, need the good guys. The theater of the ring, the progress
to the inevitable season's grand finale, the claiming of the belt by the
goodest of good guys, requires a certain progression, a finely wrought
battle between good and evil, because that's what sells tickets Sunday after
Sunday. Hey, the Hulk is a nobody without the Grand Avenger squaring
up in the other corner of the ring. The Infobahn debate is based on the
same strategy -- give the audience a show, let them root for their favorites
and let them believe that they participated in the process, but don't let it
make a difference in the outcome. Like their costumed counterparts, the
Infobahn activists don't have anything to squawk about without black hat
wearing, monopolistic, voracious, corporate toughs; its what makes the
show a show, and hell, those inside the ring get what they want in the end
anyway, control of the outcome.
The feds do their part too, refereeing this match, even down to the turn-
my-back-i-didn't-see-that-eye-gouging behavior that is sometimes
necessary to keep a good match moving to a preferred outcome. All the
feds really want, like our Infobahn battling titans, is a well
choreographed and completely meaningless contest that insures them their
share of the prize money -- control over net access and information flow.
The feds want access control because watching for bad guys is what they
do and the net may be full of them. I mean, who knows what sort of weird
pagan, drug induced, anti-American activities might being going on
right under their God-fearing noses, like say on alt.sex.gerbil? The
big corporations want it because it
makes cash flow predictable and lessens the need to compete with all those
pesky little startups that, yes, may have neater products than me, but by
God, I am the cable company and I have a *right* to make money after all
the wire that I've laid. The activists, bless their confused if well meaning
hearts, having gotten cause and effect *all* mixed up, still haven't figured
out that decentralization, not regulation, is the best way to universal access
if universal access is really important. (I might argue that giving every
hamlet in the country e-mail-order entree to L.L. Bean come hell or high
water is probably not a top priority among the nation's poor who are,
understandably, more concerned about where the hell their next meal is
coming from then whether or not their library has a 56KBit ISDN drop to
the local Internet POP). So it seems like everyone in the ring is, in fact,
interested in one thing -- controlling the outcome of the debate so that
centralized, regulated Infobahn is a foregone conclusion.
But hey, if the folks in the cheap seats buy it, those inside the ring
split up the prize money
and someone else -- that being us, the well deserving public -- ends up
paying the bill. Which is just what the feds trying to control information
flow and the big companies trying to figure out how to get a piece of the
Infobahn gold mining rights and the we-will-decide-what-you-need-cause-
we-are-smarter-than-you romantics want us to do. Which is a pretty lousy
idea, at least if what you are interested in doing is building a dynamic,
easily accessed marketplace for information, ideas and services that just
happen to be digitally based; but that's okay because they aren't.
When you watch studio wrestling you suspend belief willingly. After all,
what's the harm if the Hulk is shucking us, we are just having good old
American fun. On the other hand, letting the debaters, with their well
executed fake flying elbow throws and stage blood, shuck us into believing
that a converged digital marketplace called the Infobahn is, don't you know
it just what we've been waiting for, is likely to turn out to be no
fun at all.
_____
William C. Hulley
Fostin Capital Partners voice: 412.928.1408
681 Andersen Drive facsimile: 412.928.9635
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15220 internet: wch@shell.portal.com
