[11195] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Re: Info. have nots - Re: Clifford Lynch, Scientific American (March)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Vigdor Schreibman - FINS)
Mon Apr 7 20:34:44 1997
Date: Mon, 07 Apr 1997 13:34:28 -0500 (CDT)
From: Vigdor Schreibman - FINS <fins@access.digex.net>
In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.32.19970404142617.0068ec58@pop.mindspring.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU>
Reply-To: Vigdor Schreibman - FINS <fins@access.digex.net>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
The subject deserves a wider context than we have seen.
The information/knowledge age has been a boon to the super rich,
who in the last 15 years or so have doubled their share of
wealth and income.
During the same period government has obtained little benefit,
having "thrown away" almost a third of a trillion dollars of
appropriated funds for information technology while stripping
libraries the really serve democracy down to the bone.
Similarly, the people have not only been shut out of the
legislative process, lost their sovereign democratic powers, and
taken a massive loss in wealth and income, but remain without any
serious improvement in the organization of knowledge itself,
which remains where it was half-century ago at the beginning of
the post-modern period. We have the chaos of the Net, instead,
rendering--the People--a fool.
And this is only the beginning of the disaster of the Information Age now
far beyond the turning point. By discussing the issue on narrow grounds,
Democrats and Republicans alike can subtly avoid the real issues that
their super rich clients would prefer to make undiscussable. The loving
slow dance of Jim Warren and Ridley Kessler on this topic some days ago
was priceless.
Vigdor
