[9645] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
A different perspective regarding priorities
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Rugo)
Sat Jan 15 10:37:59 1994
To: com-priv@psi.com
Date: Sat, 15 Jan 1994 10:37:33 -0500
From: John Rugo <jrugo@nic.near.net>
Gentle Readers,
I read this in a recent edition of a local newspaper and thought it presented
an interesting perspective.
Enjoy it, but please don't flame me, I'm just a messenger.
- John Rugo
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INNOVATION
by Michael Schrage
January 9, 1994
INFORMATION-AGE HAVE-NOTS? LET THEM READ BOOKS
To hear the technocrats talk, America is busy creating the underclass
of the future. The rise of the "information superhighway" means a new
kind of poverty. The modem-less masses and the data-deprived will
huddle beneath the highway's overpasses, shut off from the multimedia
mainstream. Without government intervention, they say, the
information-rich will get richer and the information-poor will get
poorer.
"We are trying to figure out a way to maintain service to everyone,"
one senior White House official recently told Business Week magazine.
"The danger you run is creating a society of information haves and
have-nots."
No. The real risk we run is recreating a welfare state ethic in
cyberspace. Of all the misconceptions surrounding multimedia innovation
and digital superhighway metaphors, none is more misguided or
misleading than the belief that access to new telecommunications
technologies is somehow central to determining wealth and poverty in
the Information Age. This is a pseudo issue that better reflects the
paternalistic pretensions of a public policy elite than compassion for
the less fortunate.
It's bizarre that certain pundits and prognosticators want to focus on
high-tech network access subsidies for the masses barely three months
after the Department of Education published a survey claiming to show
that fully half of American adults are close to functionally
illiterate. What does network access mean to them? Or is network
access really a condescending euphemism for "Gee, poor people have a
lot to time on their hands. Let's let 'em watch ESPN, MTV and CNN for
free"?
Telecommunication does have a populist role to play. No one argues,
for instance, that telephone "lifeline" services are not essential to
guarantee everyone - no matter how poor-immediate access to police,
fire and other local calls. Lifeline subsidies are as essential as
the services they provide. Indeed, there's no denying America's
success providing universal telephone service throughout the country
was a direct result of policies and regulations that promoted
cross-subsidies.
On the surface, expanding this system of telecommunications subsidies
to include new telecommunications services seems a noble goal. In
practice, however, the more you examine the idea, the sillier and more
convoluted it becomes.
Just what do we want to subsidize here, and why? Is it really, as
the White House official said, information access? If that were true,
it would be far more logical and cost effective to give people
subsidies for newspaper and magazine purchases and keep the public
libraries open longer. We would also run our society as if we cared
about literacy.
What fundamental changes are occurring that, all of a sudden, make
multimedia technology subsidies such good public policy? The coming
convergence of cable TV and local phone companies? That's simply
ridiculous: Is access to CNN or C-SPAN an essential public service,
like dialing 911?
Ted Turner may disagree, but it's not. We may decide, in the
interests of fairness and equity, that we want to subsidize the cable
television viewing of our compatriots. But let's not try to justify
that subsidy on the grounds of creating economic opportunity for the
information have-nots.
So maybe the real policy concern here isn't mere information access,
but technology access. Well, while we certainly subsidized the growth
of telephone systems, we chose not to subsidize sales of radios and
television sets or VCRs or telephone answering machines.
Has that promoted a two-tiered society of communications rich and
poor? Should we now subsidize purchases of personal computers and
modems to ensure access to interactive media on the networks?
Of course, this is a fully competitive marketplace where prices have
been plummeting for years. You can go out today and buy for less than
$200 a 14.4 high-speed modem - a technology that cost more than $1,000
barely three years ago. You can get a slower, 2,400-band modem for
under $80. And they will get cheaper, yet.
So do we buy the high-performance Porsches for driving on the
information highway, or do we buy the clunky jalopies? Where do you
draw the line? In an environment of constantly declining prices, what
subsidies make sense? Or should we expect people to by $500 computer-
TV sets out of their own pockets?
It is completely understandable that digital do-gooders and the
computationally compassionate care about the segments of society that
literally cannot afford to be early adopters of new technologies.
Then again, look at the tremendous penetration rates of discretionary,
unsubsidized media technologies such as radio, television, Walkmen,
video games and VCRs.
If we're honest, we'll acknowledge that access to the latest media
technology isn't nearly as important as access to the latest health
care technology. The real problem isn't access; it's some pundits'
insistence that issues of social equity and economic opportunity are
better shaped by investing in technology than in people. That's a bad
idea, and it leads to bad policy.
- ------------------
Michael Schrage is a writer, consultant and research associate for the
Sloan School at MIT. He can be reached by electronic mail at
schrage@latimes.com on the Internet. His column is distributed by the
Los Angeles Times Syndicate.
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