[10515] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Debating the NII "Truisms"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dick St.Peters)
Fri Feb 25 23:14:27 1994
Date: Sat, 12 Feb 94 19:22:34 EST
From: stpeters@spare-parts.crd.ge.com (Dick St.Peters)
To: fair@apple.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
> And almost all of it is simple (though voluminous and tedious) data
> collection and dissemination which can be independently verified. Which
> is not to say it isn't valuable, it just isn't controversial.
Try that out on the tobacco lobby, or the NRA, or the AIDS lobby, or
the urban lobby, or the labor lobby, or the AMA, or the ABA, or the
AARP, or the trade lobby, or ...
Most of these interest groups base their arguments on the validity
of data collected by the government. Just deciding what to collect
can be controversial.
Unemployment just took a sharp jump upwards, simply because the way
in which the data is collected was changed. (Used to be that if a
woman answered the door, a bias built into the questions was unlikely
to count her as unemployed. Now, the questions are identical, no
matter who answers the door.)
What Barry's looking for is a bias-neutral source of information, but
there is no such thing. My British friend and I have some interesting
conversations about the differences in history education. The
differences between what is taught in public and private schools in the
US is small, and the differences between public and private schools in
Britain is small, but the differences between US and Britain are not
small. We both learned a biased version, but it wasn't a *government*
bias.
Government interpretation is often our salvation from private tyranny
just as private interpretation can be our salvation from government
tyranny. I want to know what my government thinks, what it concludes
from all the data. The biases we want to be brought to government
judgements are, after all, what we supposedly vote for.
--
Dick St.Peters, Gatekeeper
The Pearly Gateway; currently at:
GE Corporate R&D, Schenectady, NY stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com
