[9534] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Advisory committee on the NII
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Carl Briggs, Public Relations)
Sat Jan 8 12:47:44 1994
Date: Sat, 08 Jan 1994 12:47:11 -0500 (EST)
From: "Carl Briggs, Public Relations" <BRIGGS@ab.wvnet.edu>
To: COM-PRIV@psi.com
X-Vms-To: NET::"COM-PRIV@PSI.COM"
After reading the recent e-mail on this topic, I have just one question: just
how important is this "NII Advisory Council?" Or, to rephrase the question,
just how important is it _not_?
It seems that we have at least two divisions of work going on: committees that
meet, and grass-roots people who are doing the heavy lifting.
The initial groundwork for _any_ future NII has already been set down, in part
due to the fine work of people like Steve Wolff and the National Science
Foundation. Will future work simply be suspended until some committee makes
some statement?
I think not. I, myself, have little interest in waiting for some committee to
come up with something that may or may not have any practical value.
I say this not to criticize the work of committees, the role of democracy, the
value of citizen input, etc. I say this _only_ to emphasize that someone's
presence or absence on the committee won't restrict someone's ability to play a
role in the Information Superhighway.
Just one example: there are, right now, several lists of great gophers that
have tons of government information. Much of this has happened in just the
past year. One year from now, regardless of how many NII committee meetings
are held, dozens of new gophers full of government information could be
established. These resources are being set up by all sorts of individuals.
Government information, therefore, is now widely available. Even now.
There are a lot of talented people out there doing a lot of significant work.
We've had plenty of success so far, and I assume we'll see much more,
regardless of who gets invited to high-level advisory committee meetings.
I'd rather we spent more money training people to use what we have now, and to
provide access, rather than create some master-plan architecture that has to
come from a committee.
Sure, let's have committee meetings, and let's hold more congressional
hearings, and let's post it on a thousand points of gopher. But let's also put
some support into ground-level work that is accomplishing an awful lot, today.
Humbly,
Carl Briggs
BRIGGS@AB.WVNET.EDU
