[9740] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
FINS VOL. 2, ISSUE NO. 2 (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ed Tully)
Wed Jan 19 00:17:09 1994
From: tully@cscns.com (Ed Tully)
To: com-priv@psi.com
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 94 22:13:01 MST
At the risk that some have not seen this!
Forwarded message:
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> Subject: FINS VOL. 2, ISSUE NO. 2
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>
> READ THIS ISSUE OF FINS TO CONSIDER:
>
> * Al Gore's Opportunistic Theory of Cyberspace
>
> * Electronic Preview of "The Politics of Cyberspace"
>
> =========================================================================
> [Format L/R Mar:0.5",0.5"]
>
> FINS: Communicating the Emerging Philosophy of The Information Age
> FEDERAL INFORMATION NEWS SYNDICATE
> VOL II, ISSUE NO. 2 (121 lines) JANUARY 17, 1994
>
>
> CLOSING THE "VALUES-GAP":
> Gore's Television Model for Cyberspace
> By Vigdor Schreibman
>
> At the Academy of Television in Los Angeles, Jan 11, Al Gore attempted
> to once more dramatize his vision for the "information superhighways." He
> tried to explain why the necessary telecommunications infrastructure should
> be developed under the total ownership and unregulated control of the
> monopolist and oligopolist telephone and cable companies. He used the old
> "bate-and-shift" scam of television hucksters to warm up public support for
> his legislative initiative. On Dec 21, last year, Gore promised a legislative
>
> package that would safeguard the "public needs that outweigh private
> interests" in this domain. He said "we shouldn't hesitate to chart a new
> course" to avoid the Titanic catastrophe that could result from reliance upon
> narrow business self-interest to provide genuine communications and fulfill
> the promise of community that this implies. Then last Tuesday Gore disclosed
> once again that--lost in a web of political propaganda--he is without a valid
> perspective on this nation's paramount public needs.
>
> The central message conveyed by Gore and his chorus of well rehearsed
> cyberspace supporters (Mitch Kapor, et al), is that "we must put our trust
> in the marketplace." This message was delivered in a rigged and lopsided
> setting to support his cause blindly in the face of all contrary experience,
> and without examination of existing realities or alternative possibilities.
>
> In a bizarre way, the Academy of Television provided a poignant setting
> for the torrent of false purposes presented to the viewing and listening
> audience. The model of television communications has brought us a "wasteland"
> of manipulative infotainment, exploitive sex, and gratuitous violence. Use
> of the same model in cyberspace, an infinitely more powerful media that
> includes interactive television, as well as voice and data communications,
> could be even worse. Gore lost no time in showing us how effectively even
> the old electronic media can be used to promote false purposes.
>
> The marketplace morality that Gore now urges us to accept for cyberspace
> was relied upon to the maximum by recent administrations that brought us to
> the brink of fiscal bankruptcy and pervasive urban despair. Opportunism, out
> of which the morality of the marketplace is derived has turned our politics
> into a boiling cauldron of anger and frustration bringing disapproval ratings
> of Congress to their highest level in history. This primitive morality has
> made our business enterprises into organs of greed and avarice that cannot
> compete in world markets, and it has subverted our culture into a wretched
> squalor culminating in unlimited self-indulgence. In such a society,
> historian Christopher Lasch has ominously warned, "reason can impose no
> limits on the pursuit of pleasure--on the immediate gratification of every
> desire no matter how perverse, insane, criminal, or merely immoral." These
> conditions underscore the belief by six out of ten people that there needs
> to be "fundamental changes in the system of government and politics in the
> United States" and about a quarter think it needs to be "completely rebuilt."
> [CBS News Poll, June 1992].
>
> The morality of the marketplace in cyberspace is a gross contradiction
> in terms. The extraordinary success of the Internet during the past decade
> was predicated upon the cooperative spirit of networkers all over the world,
> guided by the communitarian purposes and values that drive our library,
> research, and educational institutions. The NREN model for development of
> cyberspace that was approved by Congress in 1991, and the stunning success
> story it tells, was emphatically value-driven and not market-centered.
> Contrary to these realities Al Gore along with Mitch Kapor and others are now
> trying to sell us the notion that we are compelled to "put our trust in the
> marketplace." This assertion, which is being advanced with the double speak
> images of television and despicable groupthink techniques--is absolutely
> unjustified.
>
> The administration's telecommunications policy reform initiative,
> released by the White House Jan 11, states "It is a goal of this
> Administration that by the year 2000, all of the classrooms, libraries,
> hospitals, and clinics in the United States will be connected to the NII."
> Nevertheless, that connection may be of dubious benefit to public service
> institutions if the NII is designed to maximize the manipulative commercial
> purposes of the communications content. On the contrary, a major portion of
> cyberspace must be free from profit pressures, and operated under the
> independent direction of people who are committed to serving the public good.
>
>
> Gore also promised antitrust protection against the likely abusive
> conduct of the monopolists and oligopolists who were offered a transitional
> scheme for deregulation of the telecommunications infrastructure. However,
> no sane and reasonable person can possibly rely upon such regulatory
> protection in cyberspace when the political leaders who are now making these
> promises are at the same time attempting to shape a role for the monopolists
> in the information infrastructure that is manifestly subversive of the
> paramount human, social, and ecological interests that must be served by this
> system. Moreover, the colossal telecommunications industry has proven
> themselves to be largely impossible to regulate even in narrow economic terms
> during these early periods of the new electronic media, according to Judge
> Harold Greene, a jurist who knows them better than anyone.
>
> Nevertheless, for all their wealth and coercive power telecommunications
> companies cannot vote. This is the exclusive right of individual citizens
> who can personally inform members of Congress about the basics of cyberspace.
>
> An electronic preview of my article, "The Politics of Cyberspace," will
> open Jan 19 at the FINS InfoAge Library: Telnet inforM.umd.edu /Educational_
> Resources/Computers_and_Society/Information_Infrastructure/Fins-II-15. This
> work examines industry dictated visions of a market-centered cyberspace, and
> value-directed alternatives that can best serve the public good. Get a copy
> and talk it over with your family and community. Then make sure you all
> inform policy makers in Congress (listed in the above FINS InfoAge Library
> at: Congress-Dir), what you think should be the preferred choice for the
> future of the Information Age.
>
> ----------
> Federal Information News Syndicate, Vigdor Schreibman, Editor & Publisher,
> 18 - 9th Street NE #206, Washington, DC 20002-6042. Copyright 1994 FINS.
> Internet: fins@access.digex.net. FINS is archived at the inforM (Information
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>
>
>
--
Ed Tully
Community News Service
