[1885] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: The NREN and Regulation
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steve Cisler)
Mon Jan 6 08:32:17 1992
Date: Mon, 6 Jan 92 05:31:01 -0800
From: Steve Cisler <sac@apple.com>
To: farber@central.cis.upenn.edu, perry@MCL.Unisys.COM
Cc: com-priv@psi.com, cook@tmn.com
Since a couple of people have mentioned the rural and center cities of
America, I thought I'd mention an interesting piece that appeared in New
Perspectives Quarterly ($24/yr for U.S. addresses; 800-336-1007) for the
Fall of 1991. Riccardo Petrella, head of the Forecasting and Assessment of
Science & Technology division of the European Community, writes in
"World City-States of the Future":
"Rather than an order of nation-states weighing in on a new global balance
of power, an archipelago of technologically highly developed
city-regions--or mass-consumer technopoles--is evolving. ...
At the world level, the real decision-making powers of the future, will be a
network of transnational companies in alliance with city-regional
governments."
The focus of commercial and consumer activities will be among the affluent
700 to 800 million people located in what urbanist John Friedmann calls
the thirty world-city regions--nodes in the capitalist system. L.A., Hong
Kong, Vienna, Milan, Mexico City, Sao Paulo are just a few of them.
Petrella goes on to describe the problems in ignoring the rest of the world
populations and the effect of the "high-tech Hanseatic network" will have
on democracy.
He concludes on a note of optimism: "...to solve the problems I have
described..is only a matter of the willful use of science and technology for
another purpose than serving the imperatives of market competition."
Steve Cisler
sac@apple.com
