[11162] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Re: Clifford Lynch, Scientific American (March) -- a NARROW view!
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (PACS-L Moderator)
Mon Mar 24 21:13:19 1997
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 1997 18:27:47 -0600 (CST)
From: PACS-L Moderator <libpacs@UH.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU>
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
From: Jim Warren <jwarren@well.com>
Subject: Re: Clifford Lynch, Scientific American (March) -- a NARROW view!
>----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>
>Clifford Lynch gets it right, again, in an article in the current
>Scientific American (March) extraordinary as much for its brevity --
>"Internet" articles by others tend to be interminable -- as for the depth
>of his insights.
>
>The Internet is _not_, Lynch asserts, "the world's library for the digital
>age" -- it is _not_ "designed to support the organized publication and
>retrieval of information, as libraries are". The Internet is -- but is
>nothing more than -- "a chaotic repository for the collective output of
>the world's digital 'printing presses'", says Lynch.
>
>There are those, here as elsewhere, who would disagree with this view. The
>Internet has its staunch defenders -- some overly so -- and its fiercest
>critics generally are not well - informed about it.
>
>But Lynch is neither. He is a computer scientist _and_ a librarian, a past
>president of ASIS, the director of the University of California's MELVYL
>system, and ...
I understand why Lynch would hold such a [narrow and myopic] view, given is
profession and background.
However, I am one of a great many who disagree -- aredently -- with Lynch's
narrow-focused view of the Internet. It is not merely -- nor even mostly
-- a tool "merely" for information (nor merely for commerce).
Many of us feel that, first and foremost, the net is perhaps the ultimate
tool for soundless *speech* ... and for uncensorable inkless *press* ...
and for egalitarian faceless *assembly* to seek irresistable redress of
grievences -- unfettered electronic speech, electronic press and political
assembly.
More briefly, what goes on on the net is functional *speech* -- unfettered
speech -- polite, abusive, logical, emotional, unbiased, partisan ... and
as truthful and trustworthy as soundwave speech, and egalitarian press sans
black-pollutants on ex-trees cum landfill.
To paraphrase Dave Hughes, one of the net's most ardent activists, what we
do on and with the net is speech ... where the fingers are the tongue,
speaking to the mind through the eye, in a park that is global in size.
This is the reason many of us are plaintiffs opposing the U.S. govt's
current effort to expand their censorship powers via the obscene
Communications "Decency" Act (that, incidentally, applies to *all*
communications using *any* "telecommunications device" -- not just the net
[read the bill-text!]).
Think about the greatest *effects*, gretest potential and greatest
*controversies* regarding the net ... and see if you don't perhaps agree.
--jim
Jim Warren (jwarren@well.com)
GovAccess list-owner/editor, advocate & columnist (Govt.Technology, MicroTimes)
345 Swett Rd., Woodside CA 94062; voice/415-851-7075; fax-for-the-quaint/<ask>
[self-inflating puffery: Hugh Hefner First-Amendment Award, Playboy
Foundation;
James Madison Freedom-of-Information Award, Soc.of Prof.Journalists-Nor.Calif.;
Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award (in its first year, 1992);
founded InfoWorld, DataCast, the Computers, Freedom & Privacy confs, etc. :-).]
