[9233] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Nation: Highway Robbers (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Arthur R. McGee)
Fri Dec 24 01:03:20 1993
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 1993 21:59:56 -0800 (PST)
From: "Arthur R. McGee" <amcgee@netcom.com>
To: nation-l@yukon.cren.org, com-priv@psi.com, ace-mg@esusda.gov
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Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
>From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: Nation: Highway Robbers
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Organization: PACH
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 1993 21:48:30 GMT
/** media.issues: 886.0 **/
** Topic: Nation: Highway Robbers **
** Written 9:08 am Dec 16, 1993 by corina in cdp:media.issues **
>From: Corina Hughes <corina>
Subject: Nation: Highway Robbers
/* Written 12:30 pm Dec 14, 1993 by nation@igc.apc.org in igc:nation.samples */
/* ---------- "Highway Robbers" ---------- */
/* Written 12:17 pm Dec 14, 1993 by nation in igc:nation.online */
/* ---------- "Highway Robbers" ---------- */
HIGHWAY ROBBERS
The Clinton Administration's vision of high-tech communications
slipped quietly into the public domain this past September. Despite
its implications for the control of the nation's electronic future, it
has received scant attention in the press. The White House task
force's report, "The National Information Infrastructure: Agenda
for Action," ostensibly a statement of national policy on high-tech
communications, is in fact a blueprint for corporate domination
with the public interest given short shrift.
The report conjures up enticing images of the prospective
benefits of the new information highway: "The best schools,
teachers, and courses," will be available on-line; "the vast re-
sources of art, literature, and science [will be] available every-
where"; the health care system will be immeasurably improved;
government information as well as officials will be instantly on
tap; and Americans will be able to "see the latest movies, play
[their] favorite video games, or bank and shop" from the comfort
of their homes.
If all this sounds familiar, it should. With radio in the 1920s,
television in the 1950s and cable in the 1970s, the media were
awash, and the public saturated, with similar, lavish descriptions
of the social potential of earlier information technologies.
Today, much of the happy scenario is centered on the new
electronic means of image and message production and distribu-
tion. The nation's information/media/culture sector is currently the
site of sweeping transformations, technological and organizational.
Stunning corporate mergers and acquisitions among telephone,
computer, cable and entertainment companies, each of them already
dominant in their field, are preparing the way for what could be--
failing growing public protest--an unprecedented corporate enclo-
sure of national social and cultural space.
Given this ongoing envelopment of the information landscape
by private interests, the White House report includes wildly
contradictory features. There is no lack of awareness of what is
going on in the world of commerce. Yet the emergence of mega-
communications corporations, far from eliciting government con-
cern, is an occasion for official cheerleading. The White House
task force insists that "the transforming potential of the NII
[National Information Infrastructure] should not obscure a funda-
mental fact: the private sector is already developing and deploy-
ing such an infrastructure." It emphasizes that "the private
sector will lead the deployment." It sees the information highway
as the means that "will enable U.S. firms to compete and win in
the global economy," and it offers special tax incentives to achieve
this goal.
The report also overturns the longstanding principle of
protecting the radio frequency spectrum as a national resource. It
announces the government's intention to "promote market princi-
ples in spectrum distribution." Deconstructed, this means that a
part of the spectrum is to be auctioned off. Corporate bids will be
made next May.
Yet alongside the government's carte blanche authorization
for giant telephone, computer and entertainment companies to
build and own the nation's future image and message apparatus,
there is the promise that "all Americans [will] have access to the
resources and job creation potential of the Information Age."
Is this a credible assurance? Can public benefits be expect-
ed when the structure is erected on a privately built base? The
initial response of the American Library Association's Washington
office met this issue head-on. It said, "The Administration assumes
that `the private sector will build and run virtually all of the
National Information Infrastructure.' Yet this is the emerging
infrastructure for communication--the activity that makes us
human.... Market forces alone will not ensure that societal goals
are met." A privately built electronic network "geared to mass
entertainment and maximum profit" may be far different from what
is needed for public use.
An advisory council of representatives from industry and
the public, soon to be appointed by the President, is intended to
give the national information infrastructure a wider base of
support. Actually, once the information highway is designed, built
and in the hands of electronic and communications companies, the
public interest will be at best a supplicant, seeking modest con-
cessions from a powerful industry skilled in the art of using
government to its own advantage.
Only the investment of a substantial public equity in the
forthcoming electronic infrastructure can guarantee the develop-
ment of the full social potential of the new technology. There are
precedents for this. In World War II the government built syn-
thetic rubber plants and shipbuilding facilities to guarantee the
success of the war effort. The public's informational well-being is
no less a matter of national security.
Soon after radio became a popular medium, in the late 1920s,
a national outcry arose against the rapid commercialization of this
wondrous new communications instrument. There was near unanimi-
ty in American intellectual and cultural circles on the need for
public ownership of what had so quickly become a wayward
industry. A broadcast reform movement was organized, and for a
decade it sought to secure a different custodianship and direction
for radio. The movement failed, but it established a historical
marker for citizen involvement in cultural/technological questions.
Today, the government is preparing to stand aside and allow
a corporate takeover of another medium of informational and
cultural exchange. Tell your Representatives in Congress not to let
this happen. Our minds as well as our wallets are at stake.
HERBERT I. SCHILLER
Herbert I. Schiller is the author of an updated edition of Mass
Communications and American Empire (Westview).
This article is reprinted with permission from the December 20,
1993 issue of The Nation magazine. (c) 1993 The Nation Company,
Inc.
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