[307] in Information Retrieval
Re: DISCUSSION: World Wide Web: Threat or Menace?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Tom Owens)
Tue Apr 30 15:09:45 1996
To: Grant A Young <gyoung@MIT.EDU>
Cc: elibdev@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 30 Apr 1996 12:10:52 EDT."
<9604301610.AA19803@guru.MIT.EDU>
Date: Tue, 30 Apr 1996 15:07:06 EDT
From: Tom Owens <owens@MIT.EDU>
> I'm neutral about the impact of the Web. Obviously, things will be done
> differently. Socially, we're still human beings with pretty much the
> same motivations. Computers are just tools that expand our reach. My
> concern is that they don't expand the reach of those who want to control
> us and that we preserve our privacy and dignity as individuals from
> external attack.
> ----------------
"Computers are just tools that expand our reach" is pretty much my
point. A decade or so ago a local television station played a tape
of a suicide and this led to a national debate about the responsibility
of the press in making this available -- and the possibility that it
would lead to other suicides. Shouldn't Leary's suicide spark a similar
debate among people like us?
Finally, walk into a video store and you'll see sections clearly meant
for children physically separate from sections clearly meant for adults.
This arrangement is well-understood and expected. What is its analogue
on the web and, as a society, are required to rebuild these arrangements
from scratch all over again?
Listening to some particularly bad rock-n-roll in the early 1980's, I said
that if everyone was going to have 15 minutes of fame, surely a synthesizer
would be involved. Now, I think it will involve html.
thanks, Owens
