[8784] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: TIME magazine article spreads NSFnet MYTH
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dave Hughes)
Sat Dec 4 19:15:39 1993
From: dave@oldcolo.com (Dave Hughes)
To: BRIGGS@ab.wvnet.edu (Carl Briggs, Public Relations)
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 1993 17:11:30 -0700 (MST)
Cc: com-priv@psi.com (compriv)
In-Reply-To: <01H631HNM4Z6ELNPE9@WVNVMS.WVNET.EDU> from "Carl Briggs, Public Relations" at Dec 4, 93 02:04:15 pm
Carl Briggs, in commenting on Cook's critique of TIME's 'Cyperspace' article
sez:
> I don't know that there is much for the mainsteam press to dig into. I think
> technology just keeps evolving, and so a "schedule" to "phase out" can
> be changed or updated _hourly_, if necessary.
> Until the NSF issues some official "statement of phasing out," I don't
> plan to build my life around some cryptic weasal words like "schedule."
> P.S. -- In short, it may well be a useless phrase that hardly affects the
> overall integrity of the story...maybe the "phasing out" is no story, at all...
Woah! Well you better hang onto your wallet, and thank the likes of
independent online critics and journalists, if you think the 'mainstream
press' shouldn't try to track what governments with tax dollars and
regulatory and legal powers are doing with the NII during the critical
phase when precedents and deals are being laid down that will define
what the NII will look like for decades to come. Your comment about
how fast technology and announced schedules can be changed made onlu
image leap to my mind. That of Soapy Smith, the Colorado City con
man who played a shell game until we ran him out of town to Skagway
Alaska where, when he tried to take over the town they shot him dead.
But IF the mainstream press starts writing - for millions of Americans
who are NOT online in compriv and know how to dig out the facts for
themselves - about such matters, it better be right and NOT mislead
or lull the public into thinking things are going in one direction
when they may well be going in the opposite.
And when I read the TIME article, in its paper form, and read another
missimpression when Dave Farber is quoted as saying the Internet
"...is a perfect Marxist state, where almost nobody does any
business"????????? Why did you say that Dave? Or were you misquoted
or taken out of context. I can't beleive THAT whole paragraph on
commercialization and the Internet either. But millions of Americans,
now alerted by ALL the press and media to that arcane thing called
'The Internet' are getting their first education on it from that
self-same press, which had better either 'dig deeper' and figure
out for itself how to make the complex and arcane, understandable
to the Great Unwashed (who, however, hold ultimate political power
the last time I checked) or else don't talk at all about what
government is doing with it.
But, Carl, you are right about one thing. In the three page,
profusely illustrated "First Nation in Cyberspace" TIME story,
the few sentences on the NSF scheduling out '..its support' for
the network are isolated and maybe 'not important.' I guess
what Trudeau and Doonsbury think about is. And I can congratulate
TIME for one thing. It sure knows what cyberpunks, playing in
the Internet Sandbox are up to.
