[12836] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
STS in the Washington Post (info-highways & asphalt highways compared)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (by way of Rbohn@ucsd.edu (Roger Bo)
Mon May 30 23:21:38 1994
Date: Mon, 30 May 1994 12:05:08 -0700
To: com-priv@psi.com
From: RESCLOVE@amherst.edu (by way of Rbohn@ucsd.edu (Roger Bohn))
Forwarded to Com-priv. Remember, I'm just the messenger. I thought it was
too unusual to ignore. And I even agree with much of the history of the
U.S. highway system.
STS=Science, technology, and society. It was posted to an STS discussion list.
-------------------------------------
Dear Fellow STSers,
Can STS knowledge play any constructive role in real-life
politics? To that perennial question, I continue to seek answers
by empirical means.
Cheers,
Dick Sclove
[The following essay is reprinted from the Outlook Section
of _The Washington Post_, Sunday, May 29, 1994. You are welcome
to post it anywhere you feel is appropriate:]
*****************************************************************
THE GHOST IN THE MODEM
For Architects of the Info-Highway, Some Lessons
From the Concrete Interstate
By Richard Sclove and Jeffrey Scheuer
Vice President Gore envisions the information superhighway
as the second coming of the interstate highway system championed
by his father, former U.S. Senator Al Gore, a generation ago.
Let us hope that the junior Gore is proven wrong. Rush-hour
traffic jams, gridlock, garish plastic-and-neon strips, high
fatality rates, air pollution, global warming, depletion of world
oil reserves--have we forgotten all of the interstate highway
system's most familiar consequences?
It's not that Gore's analogy is wrong, only that his
enthusiasm is misplaced. Comparing the electronic and asphalt
highways is useful--but mostly as a cautionary tale. Building
the new information infrastructure will not entail the degree of
immediate, physical disruption caused by the interstate highway
system. But sweeping geographic relocations, and accompanying
social transformations, seem probable. And the risk of inequity
in contriving and distributing electronic services--or,
conversely, imposing them where they are not wanted--is clear.
Indeed, disparities in access to new information systems
have already begun to surface. A study released this past week
by a group of public interest organizations, including the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and
the Center for Media Education, notes that low-income and
minority communities are underrepresented in U.S. telephone
companies's initial plans for installing advanced communications
networks.
Unequal access is only the most obvious among many social
repercussions that may lie in store for us. The real history of
the interstate highway system suggests how we can think about and
control the vast implications of new technologies and a new
national public infrastructure.
It is widely assumed that Americans' infatuation with cars
led to the construction of America's superhighways. But actually
when Congress passed the Interstate Highway Act in 1956, car
sales were slack, and there was no popular clamor for building a
new road system. At the time only about half of American
families owned an automobile; everyone else depended on public
transportation. Congress was responding to aggressive lobbying
by auto makers and road builders, plus realtors who saw profits
in developing suburban subdivisions.
The act's key provisions included support for bringing
freeways directly into city centers and earmarking gasoline tax
revenues for highway construction. As the interstate highways
were built, city and suburban development adapted to the
quickening proliferation of autos. Soon more Americans found
themselves forced to buy a car in order to be able to shop or
hold a job. The Highway Trust Fund, by assuring the rapid
atrophy of competing public transit systems, bolstered this
trend.
Thus the asphalt highways--and the society around them--are
a reflection of successful lobbying by powerful business
interests and external compulsion, not simply the free choices of
consumers. There is no guarantee that the process of wiring
consumers and employees into the electronic highway system will
be different.
The effects of the interstate highway system on American
communities were profound, especially in the cities. As
historian James Flink notes, "Ambitious programs for building
urban freeways resulted in the massive destruction of once viable
poor and minority neighborhoods." In other cases, new highways
encircled poor neighborhoods, physically segregating minorities
into marginalized ghettoes.
Gradually, a black and Hispanic middle-class did emerge.
Its members too fled along the interstate to the suburbs, further
draining economic and cultural resources from the inner city.
This contributed to the emergence of a new social phenomenon:
today's desperately deprived, urban underclass.
Elsewhere the effects were subtler but still significant.
The noise and danger from growing numbers of autos drove
children's games out of the street, and neighbors and families
off their front porches. Before long, suburbs without sidewalks
came to signal an unprecedented paucity of local destinations
worth walking to. Suburban housewives found themselves leading
increasingly isolated daytime lives at home.
Highways made shopping malls possible, enabling franchise
and chain store sales to boom. But this sapped downtown centers.
For some teenagers and senior citizens, today's anonymous,
consumption-mad expanses provide a semblance of community space--
having swallowed up the general store, the soda fountain, the
Main Street sidewalk, and the town square. There is ample danger
of the new electronic technology extending these losses.
Remember too that it is easy to romanticize new technology.
The popular arts glorified life on the highway. People read Jack
Kerouac's "On the Road," watched "Route 66" on television, and
recall the Merry Pranksters' psychedelic bus-capades during the
'60s. In fusing alienation and rebellion with youthful
exuberance, each of these foreshadows contemporary cyberpunk
culture. Yet real-life experience on the interstate is mostly
banal and uneventful. McDonald's, Pizza Hut, and Wal-Mart look
about the same wherever you exit.
There are also political ramifications of a vast new public
infraipation_: A number of
European nations are out-competing America in including lay
people in technology decision-making. For instance, the Danish
government appoints anels of everyday citizens to cross-examine
a range of experts, deliberte among themselves and then publish
their own social assessments of technological alternatives.
Sweden, Norway and Germany have pioneered processes for involving
workers directly in designing new production systems.
The coming revolution in information systems is going to
change life for everyone--including the multitude who, by
circumstance or choice, never use computers. It is imperative to
develop mechanisms for involving all segments of our society in
designing, evaluating and governing these new systems.
Data highway enthusiasts may see such measures as wasteful
obstructions of market forces. But what entrepreneurs call red
tape is really democracy in action.
__________________
Richard Sclove is executive director of the Loka Institute
in Amherst, Mass., a public interest research organization
concerned with science, technology and democracy. He also
directs the Public Interest Technology Policy Project at the
Institute for Policy Studies. Jeffrey Scheuer, a New York
writer, is a fellow of the Loka Institute.
*****************************************************************
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will be used, in turn, to help organize a nationwide network of
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These activities represent a collaborative undertaking of
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are tax deductible. Thank you!
Please note: Loka Institute members will be travelling
during much of June 1994. Please forgive us if we are
consequently slow in replying to your comments, queries or
requests.
--Dick Sclove
Executive Director, The Loka Institute, P.O. Box 355,
Amherst, MA 01004-0355, USA
Tel. 413 253-2828; Fax 413 253-4942
E-mail: resclove@amherst.edu
