[14604] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
FYI France: H.Le Crosnier on the Internet
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jack Kessler)
Mon Dec 16 06:50:12 2002
Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2002 04:45:44 -0800
From: Jack Kessler <kessler@WELL.COM>
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FYI France: Herve' Le Crosnier on the Internet
Just having completed the registration of some Internet domains
-- via payments to a US American outfit called "Network Solutions
Inc", which now is owned by another US American outfit called
"Verisign Inc", NasdaqNM ticker VRSN... -- and just having read
yet another story about the machinations of ICANN, in its
continual efforts to "scale up" to international realities, I
have been wondering how the US American domination of the
Internet has been playing overseas, recently...
So what follows here is a recent essay -- by Herve' Le Crosnier,
the very able and much - experienced editor of the librarians'
econference in France, Biblio-fr -- presenting his views of the
structure and role of the Internet, going forward.
The view from France, in other words -- a very different one from
the usual presented by the US press, but very representative...
Some of what Le Crosnier observes, here, will sound very
unfamiliar to US Americans, but not so to perhaps most others...
--oOo--
"Democracy, Society, Creativity --
in the Era of the New Technologies"
[Introductory text to a colloquium on "Mass Education and
Social Transformation", held by the Fe'de'ration
franc,aise des Maisons des Jeunes et de la Culture, at
Mantes-la-Jolie, March 26 & 27, 2002.]
by Herve' Le Crosnier [tr. JK]
I had the chance to first use the Internet in 1992, and
immediately I felt a great breath of fresh air, from the very
first day when I succeeded in obtaining messages from a
"listserv", apparently in the US. It was 5pm, and the computer --
the terminal, actually... you remember, those good old terminals
with orange letters on their black backgrounds -- was lit up on
my desk, and I was working in the catalog of my library. And then
suddenly an avalanche of messages was arriving, from the other
end of the world...
These were professional notices, but also a guy -- I still
remember -- who was telling me live (I only understood afterward
that this was a different mode, although I sensed right away the
immediacy of the communication) about a speech by Al Gore during
a meeting on the Internet being held somewhere in the West of the US.
What? Me, in my city in the provinces -- in Caen, in Normandie --
I was at the "center of the world"! At my own desk, as anywhere
else in fact, I might receive, directly, observations by people
like me on things which they themselves were seeing.
I believe that this "miracle" is renewed, repeatedly, for all of
us who now use the Internet. I remember that ad from a few years
ago, for an Internet access service: "How long has it been since
you've had an intelligent conversation?"... If you are the only
one in your village to cherish a particular passion, there
nevertheless may be hundreds like you around the world. And the
Internet makes contact with them possible -- from here, locally,
and for the people who are here and who are local.
A short time later, urged on by Michel Melot, who at the time
presided over the Conseil Supe'rieur des Bibliothe`ques, I
discovered that I myself could become a "broadcaster", from my
own little "center of the world", in my city in the provinces --
via a network of people who would engage in a long conversation,
enabling both professional communications but also the general
outlook on the world provided by such a medium. And so began an
impassioned discussion, which now has continued for nine years,
and which has permitted the weaving of a web of over 9,000 French
- speaking librarians.
I found that from that terminal of 25 lines filled with 80 little
orange characters, I could receive and send -- I could
participate in already - existing and immense social networks --
and I could build a new network, constructing the social capital
so necessary to personal life and to democratic interaction.
This was before the reign of "ecommerce", but it was -- it still
is -- in the midst of a new wave of global resistance to the
nefarious effects of recent dizzying increases in inequality...
It is the Internet: a new tool for social control, but also a new
tool for democracy -- a new network of power, but also a new
place for the emergence of the counter - cultures which critique
and resist that power.
1) The Nature of the Internet
First one has to ask about the nature of the Internet, before
evaluating its impact on the forms of social organization and
contacts which it can create.
For the social nature of the Internet is as path - breaking as is
the technique which supports it. The Internet is a "network of
networks", one which provides a large margin of autonomy to its
periphery -- there is no center, to the Internet. On the other
hand the Internet is the heart itself of the interconnectivity of
each of the computers which uses it -- by virtue of the
interconnectivity and communications norms which define it, the
"IP protocol".
At the level of social uses as well, the Internet displays these
same sorts of contradictions:
-- The Internet is a network for the communication of personal
expression. For the first time, outside of face - to - face
conversation, a technical innovation permits an exchange among
peers: I receive information, and I can respond to it, transmit
it, critique it, all in the same text and at the same time as its
original dissemination, and I can use it in the construction of a
social network. Email is the essence of the Internet.
-- The Internet is media. Specialist editors can organize
information on the Internet and make it available to the public.
This can contradict the first point about personal expression,
which nevertheless co - exists with it. As media, the Internet
submits to the regime of concentrated power -- a few large
publishers, who share the greatest part of the connectivity, such
as Yahoo, Disney, CNN... -- and to the conformity of content --
the media, on the Internet, also submit to the rules of mass
marketing, in spite of their technical capacity to do better, for
the production of media - based information has to respect the
rules of economies of scale.
-- The Internet is a market - place. For ecommerce directed at
consumers and for ecommerce among businesses... This last is part
of the redefinition of business itself, of its methods, of its
participation in a global market which tends to disguise hidden
costs: costs such as loss of energy in the transportation
industries, social loss in the failure to provide jobs for people
to work where they live, cultural loss from the omnipresence of
technology - oriented culture. The global marketplace of the
Internet is a danger, for the local marketplaces which we
actually inhabit. The immediacy, the interactivity, the
negotiation - without - leaving - the - office, all tend to make
us believe that people and objects behave in the same manner, and
make us forget logistical questions, and social questions about
the producers of those objects.
-- The Internet is a bazaar. Each of us can come to it with
whatever we produce, whatever strikes us, and exchange it and
circulate it. The success of online auctions illustrates this
particular characteristic of the Internet -- the success of music
- sharing systems such as Napster, also. The bazaar is the place
where the underground economy recycles itself -- and it also is
the place for the circulation of subversive ideas, and what
effect will that have?
-- The Internet is a product of ideology. The sectors of society
which succeed in believing that their own development is a part
of the global development of all society are only those which
already have some wind in their sails. And today, clearly, it is
the Internet which is at the controls. The Internet is presented
as the miraculous solution to all problems of economic crisis, of
education, of the desertions from political democracy... simply
"Internet" the solutions, and there will be no more problems...
-- The Internet is, itself, a motor of the market. Notably the
market for computers -- which must be traded - in every two
years, now -- and for software, and for more and more new
electronic things which must be connected to it, from
refrigerators to music players such as the iPod. This market
involves the consumer, but also the policy - maker, who must take
part in the network in its many roles in the social and political
infrastructure -- think of all of the digital development in city
and regional planning techniques, for example.
-- Finally, the Internet is an exhibitionist. In a photographic
sense: a magnifying glass, a means of making things appear larger
-- a playing field, as well, for the latest trends in society.
Think of economic trends, recall the so - called "New Economy";
trends in jurisprudence, the new legal order which mixes laissez
- faire for the powerful with repression for the masses, which
one finds in "copyright" questions and notably in the use of
music by youth; cultural trends, decorating and "techno" as
creative modes; social trends, the Internet as a tool for new
forms of social struggle via the network.
Such facets of the Internet apparently are those which will
occupy us over the two days of this colloquium. We must beware of
reducing the Internet to a definition which will be too rigid for
taking into account the diversity of its uses, of the dangers
which some of them involve, and also of the possibilities which
can emerge from the practices of interconnectivity.
2) The Internet and the Economy of Monopoly
We are told that we are developing into a "service economy". On
the Internet, the term "service" has begun to take on a very
particular sense, one which has become a "thing" in all the
senses of that term.
A program offered as a "service" no longer is installed on the
terminal of its user. It is rented, at the moment of its usage,
as a function of that usage. You no longer have word -
processing, you rent it. And when you rent it, you are not billed
for the bit of emailing which does not "serve" you, but there are
other means for making you pay, constantly, for your rental...
For example:
-- Your music, as a "service". No longer purchased for a use
which you choose, but rented for the duration of a listening
session. The more you listen the more you will pay. And it will
be impossible to copy so as to share with your friends. Industry,
led by Disney, is in the process of imposing a law in the US
providing that all document readers -- computers, CD and DVD
players, music - players... -- carry an anti - copying system.
You no longer will pay, but so what? You will have the great
music chainstores left, for your use... mental molding, without
paying a penny...
-- Your memory, as a "service". Even better than providing a
personal archive -- your photo album, for example -- companies
will sell you a shared service, with anytime - access they will
say, to your own recollections, as you see fit to provide them to
the system. Thus sites such as PhotoPoint.com offered to house
your photos as a subscription service... at least until December
2001 when maintenance costs proved too high for that firm's
Pantellic Software parent and the site was closed, without
advising users, who thus were deprived of their own memories...
-- Your automobile, as a "service". No longer a matter of getting
it fixed at the local garage, your network - connected car is
pursued by its manufacturer, piece by piece... and he alone
possesses the digital code needed to detect defective parts and
reorder them, obtaining the part which corresponds exactly to
your order and to you. For your security, obviously...
-- and, even more, your washing machine as a "service"... rented,
pay - as - you - go, and monitored remote by the company --
that's the latest from Brandt Appliances, Cie...
-- and, my friend, even world science soon will be disseminated
"as a 'service'". A library pays for a "subscription licence" to
a journal... if anything goes wrong, pfffffffft, the journal
disappears from your screen... And don't even ask about making an
inhouse copy of the articles which interest you -- it is so
simple to return to the source, each time, that it no longer is
possible to copy the articles -- service <=> service.
-- and... one could go on, for a long time, speaking for example
of "seeds as a 'service'", which produces infertile plants so
that the peasant must return every year to the seed company...
For the goal of "service", apparently, is to force you to pay --
each time, for each usage. It is, principally, a control of your
social practices so as better to sell you new services, through
the techniques of "one - to - one marketing".
The Internet exhibits such new practices of the "monopolies of
convergence" -- one speaks of convergence when all media use the
same network, digitized from end to end. No longer a matter of
controlling prices, as in the time of the cartels, now the goal
is "lifetime value" -- of a person -- to sell to him, for the
duration of his life, all of the services which he ever will
need. And so much the better if one knows the state of his bank
account -- inasmuch as the banker is in on the deal, as well,
also providing his particular "service", through his own banker's
"portal".
Have a look, in this regard, at the unified "free" portal for
members offered this Fall by the Cre'dit Agricole, TF1, and a
telecommunications company whose name we shall not mention...
Consider the slithering progress of Microsoft, from having been a
software firm to becoming now a multiservice bureau on the
networks. Consider finally the financial crisis in the values of
the "New Economy": the banks now have "laissez faire", and the
telephone companies have bought them up, to launch gigantic
"Commercial Service Centers".
3) Resistance, to Convergence
Happily, the future is not yet written. The simple act of
denouncing a trend, of revealing it, can aid greatly in
counteracting it. For this tendancy towards pay - as - you - go
monopoly is beginning to come up against another use of the
Internet network: its bursting - of - boundaries, its peer - to -
peer communications, its swarming civil society.
Everyone knows of the role played by the Internet in the
mobilization at Seattle, which succeeded in blocking the
pheonomenon of neo - Liberal economic globalization by creating a
globalization of human networks. This phenomenon is being studied
by the braintrust of the US Army which is the Rand Corporation.
Under the title "Social Netwar", Rand describes the new capacity
of the networks to focus and coordinate common action: everyone
comes to such an effort with his own particular objectives --
even physically, considering the differences among "affinity
groups" -- and it is the convergence of all of this which assures
success. So this finishes the dichotomies and oppositions of the
times of the Cold War -- no one is forced to "choose sides", now,
in taking advantage of strengths of numbers and of diversity.
In addition, the Developing Nations -- and notably the networks
of militants in "The South" who now are the most active -- can
participate openly, as much by their presence as by their
capacity to project their themes, their needs, and their
proposals onto the global agenda. These are networks such as
"Focus on the Global South" of Walden Bello, or "Third World
Network" of Martin Khor. It is evidently the "Porto Alegre
Experience" which is being inscribed upon our daily lives, in our
reflections and exchanges with each other, because no controlled
media can obstruct this diffusion of information. The networks go
around such roadblocks.
The information will reach, directly, any who can understand it,
and help them to develop their own proposals -- to reach those
who know how to send it further, via "forwarding" to their own
networks. Working with interconnectivities instead of
hierarchies: we are moving toward a new global movement of the
non - aligned -- the non - aligned from everywhere, among all
populations -- in which the Internet will play a fundamental
role.
And this political and social opposition at the global scale is
only one example of this swarming of peoples associated with the
Internet. One also finds other trends, in other social practices:
-- the movement for free software. This provides an
infrastructure of experimental software, outside of the pay - as
- you - go monopolies described earlier here. This movement is
posing fundamental questions: what are the social bases of
exchange, and of gift?; what does one want, when one makes a
gift? How is the gift to be noted in the "noosphe`re", the
ensemble of interconnected knowledge of the spirit defined by the
Christian philosopher Teilhard de Chardin? How to measure such
riches? What would be an infrastructure useful to everyone, a
common good that is global?
-- file exchange, peer - to - peer. This does pose significant
problems for authors -- how to deal with massive changes in
thinking about copyright -- but these are changes which reveal a
new strategy for the construction of knowledge. A new equilibrium
will be found, certainly, between advantages in terms of freedom
of expression and the necessity of rewarding creativity. For
culture serves above all to permit us to live together. The user
of culture -- reader, listener, student... -- needs to take part
in what attracts him, and this also is the social engine for the
human networks which reinforce the usages of culture. That is how
they are created, and it is the economy of their creation.
-- the Budapest Initiative for freedom of access to research.
This assembles thousands of scientists, and institutions such as
libraries and scientific academies, to promote the free
circulation of scientific articles throughout the world.
Currently, publishing monopolies such as Elsevier hold the
"copyright" of researchers for their own sole profit, and resell
the knowledge at high prices to universities and research
centers.
Science, though, is funded "at the source"... with the Internet,
it can be the same for scientific publication, the articles
issued by the public financing of research. The Budapest
Initiative, which was made public on February 14, 2002, foresees
the self - archiving and exchange of research publications, and
the creation of new scientific journals which are free - of -
charge -- so that knowledge becomes really accessible throughout
the world, and so that it really does serve the development of
collective well - being.
4) New Public Services
Together with the actions of citizens, in organizing other uses
for the Internet, there also are new problems, posed by public
power at all levels, from the local to the national and to
international proposals.
When only 10% of a population has access to a public good, others
may feel that they themselves might pass it up. But the question
changes when it is a third of the population which uses the
Internet, as is the case today in Europe, and when the media
speak of it day after day. Offering access to everyone, and
training to guarantee self - sufficiency to every Internaut,
becomes a highly - sensitive question of "digital" planning.
Should access to the Internet be thought of as an investment in
infrastructure, for the public good? Any region -- any city --
which is well - irrigated with communications networks, can
attract corporations, research centers... Decentralization
planning can discover a new resource, if high - capacity networks
and networks of capable human beings can be brought together.
All of these choices may be discussed with the citizens, for an
equal distribution of infrastructure between the needs of
economics and those of citizenship. Too often, however, the
"Silicon Valleys" content themselves with promoting their
networks for corporations alone. The citizen's role is either
ignored, or reduced to a publicity stunt for use by the
municipality.
This is why initiatives which go further ought to be encouraged,
as at Brest here in France:
-- public access is provided
-- Internet training is provided
-- servers are provided for use by groups, associations, unions
-- free software, deliberately avoiding the monopolies, is
promoted
But beyond the promotion of the Internet, questions concerning
the long term development of the networks also need to be
considered:
-- Who owns the network? Can we leave to private enterprise alone
the tasks of long term risk - taking, or is government
supervision the guarantor of maintaining equal access, and of the
possibility of an economics which will support and develop the
employees of tomorrow... Thierry Carcenac, French legislative
deputy from the Tarn, has published a very interesting report on
this subject.
-- At the moment when IPv6 is being deployed, and therefore at
the moment of the segmentation of Internet infrastructure through
the emergence of "reserved bandwidth", what is the role of
government agencies regarding network access? Are high - speed
channels to be reserved simply for those who can pay their price?
-- Domain names may be multiplied infinitely, with ease. But they
pose limits for the development of new servers. Can one leave to
a monopolistic private company, which engages in other activites
like certification, such as Verisign, the disposition of the
right to register doman names -- and therefore to charge fees?
Would not some sort of international public institution be more
appropriate, one which might redistribute gains from the sale of
names, on behalf of developing regions?
More generally, insofar as the networks induce a digitization of
numerous cultural activities and trends, how can we define and
protect the new global public goods which are associated with
them:
-- the public good in the definition of norms -- and their
publicity, and their free access. Can we accept that such norms
are to be governed by advance registration of patents, by
corporations participating in normalization working groups?
Debate over this rages at the heart of the WorldWideWeb
Consortium...
-- the public good in the distribution of network nodes. Are we
to follow the current uncertain model -- in which each router
relays all of the packets which it receives, without
distinguishing among them, and it is this straightforward
distribution which assures the global quality of the Internet --
or must we accept the implementation of global private networks,
reducing by that much the machines governed by equal
distribution.
-- the public good in the knowledge which circulates on the
network. We must not forget that the networks were born in the
universities, and that the capacity to use them in exchanging
knowledge and promoting education for everyone is at the heart,
of all of this, for our entire global society. Ought these
essential goods to become entirely dependent upon private
initiatives and competition?
-- the public good in a common patrimony of humanity. Faced with
the appetities of digital enterprises -- such as that of Corbis,
which is a subsidiary of Microsoft -- what is to be the
definition of the network's role, and of a public digital
cultural space, and what is to be its extent?
-- the public good in documents produced in the public domain.
Reports, statistics, inquiries, analyses -- all of the
information which public agencies produce ought to be available
to citizens, to spur the production of additional expertise.
Finally, basic education and continuing education must be re -
thought, in light of their first forays into privatization and of
the competition which the networks encourage. Yes, the Internet
can supplement education, but we must resolve the questions of
equality, of the access by all to education, of public support
for an education which is both independant and of high quality.
The free play of competition, in a sector so fundamental as
education, encourages more knowledge which is directly
applicable, than it does the diffusion of knowledge which is
transmissible. I myself teach in the domain of the technologies
of the Internet: I know very well the pressures emanating from
companies in the sector, who want training in this or that
software package -- but my role as a university instructor is to
enable my students to acquire a general understanding of the
technologies, one which will allow them to adapt, when the moment
arrives that they lack a particular something needed by company
X. And I want them to be able to imagine pursuits -- or repeats
-- of their studies, throughout their entire lives.
Education is the offer to individuals of the means for their
autonomy, and of the capacity to place in perspective that which
they have to do, as employee or as citizen. Of course, nearby,
numerous other educational possibilities can find a place:
private and profit - making, very much for the specific training
of knowledge -- or private but non - profit, like the great
associations for popular education, such as the Fe'de'ration
Franc,aise des Maisons des Jeunes et de la Culture which is our
host today.
But the defense of teaching which is secular, free, and
obligatory, remains essential: just as essential as is the
inclusion in such teaching of new technologies of communication
-- image analysis, Internet use, the mastery of communications
tools -- certainly when technological innovation and an explosion
in new questions of citizenship make lifelong and continuing
education so necessary.
5) The Question of Copyright: Cultural Creativity, and a
Surveillance Society
It seems very interesting to me that a great deal of discussion
is to be devoted to the question of copyright, during these
meetings. Digitization, and the transmission of texts over the
networks, are profoundly changing the methods of protecting
copyright.
Copyright is a matter of balancing the needs of artists to earn
their living by their art and the needs of all of society to
obtain inventions and creations so as to enlarge the general
knowledge possessed by humanity. In copyright, this translates
into "public domain": the exception made for education or
research, for the right of citation and of criticism, for the
fair use of a private copy...
Currently, however, certain zealots of copyright see only one
side of the balance. They have succeeded in conveying a message
which is simple but wrong: one must pay, for each use made of a
work. Now everyone worries for the author, who will be robbed by
copying, by library borrowing, by the sharing of cassettes among
friends... The belief is that we are aiding Flaubert, but we find
ourselves enlisted in the service of Vivendi, or of Disney, or of
Elsevier or Microsoft...
In the world of artifacts, copyright is negotiated at the moment
of manufacture -- the publishing of a book, the pressing of a
disk, the placing on sale of films or the distribution of
broadcasts. With the Nets, one sees a shift toward a negotiation
at the moment a work is used: a license for a defined number of
sessions, restrictions on personal copying, licenses adapted to
the material, refusals to loan digital texts...
These changes, moreover, are not being made to conventional
copyright which is, I repeat, a matter of balancing -- and this
since the first Statute of Anne, the ancestor of all copyright.
The changes force us to reconsider collectively, weighing the
interests of authors and those of society, and taking into
account the interests in this patrimony of the producers and
distributors who support that figure of the author.
The US Revolution -- their independence from England -- was made
possible because the journals of cities in the 13 states were
able to reprint the information which they derived from the
journals of neighboring cities, and thus they circulated the news
and organized the human networks which brought the Republic into
being. Information is a social object, and not just a private
good launched into a market of symbolic goods.
So we must reconsider copyright politically: as a function of the
type of work involved, for a satellite photo is not a creative
work like a stage play; or of the type of usage, as can one
really forbid the study of contemporary art in schools?; and with
regard to private usage of the work -- for copies made for one's
- self and one's network of friends -- who after all will become
future buyers, perhaps not of the copied work but of something
else which they then will circulate among their own social group.
We need to avoid falling into the trap of pay - as - you - go, as
that has been installed in the borrowing policies of libraries,
and we need to avoid the hysterias of demagogues: no, you do not
rob an author when you use a work which you have not purchased --
you circulate your culture, a thing which brings us to buy other
works, in fact. You do not rob a music producer when you make a
cassette for using in your car: the public success, realized by
this very usage of these copies, is what earns him his living...
6) Social Capital and Symbolic Capital, versus Economic Capital
As a conclusion, to this already too lengthy presentation, I
would like to emphasize the capacities of the Internet for
renewing the democratic process. Modern democracies increasingly
confront decisions which put grave consequences into play -- long
term -- in situations of uncertainty, and moreover situations
which are obscured by the "experts" in any given specialized
area. Whether one thinks of genetic engineering, of nuclear
energy and its wastes, or of global warming...
Citizens generally are kept from participating in such decisions.
Political lobbies provide excuses for our politicians and do the
real work -- including lying for them, as we have seen in the
Enron affair, in the United States.
Citizens, however, have a need for expertise in these areas. They
have a need for different information which can contradict,
circulate, oppose, and defend, before the "tribunal of reason".
We no longer can place our confidence in "science" to do this for
us. The example of the participation of actual victims in the
research networks on AIDS assembled by Act-Up demonstrates how
citizens, when they do things together, can acquire knowledge and
develop methods which place them on the same level as the
experts, often self - proclaimed and authorized by their own
expertise -- consider the propaganda of the multinational tobacco
companies, or the revenge taken by asbestos victims on the
arrogance of its producers.
The Internet is a formidable tool in the explosion of cooperative
knowledge, of the networks and of counter - expertise, in this
capacity providing everyone with an opportunity for increasing
common knowledge. It is a tool for circulating information, and
for influencing decisions.
More generally, when "economic capital" and "military power" are
concentrated in very few hands, the multitudes possess as their
tool of opposition their "social capital" -- the capacity to
exchange information, and to mobilise for mutual advancement and
social protection -- and their "symbolic capital" -- the cultural
images which they can transmit to each other, with the assistance
and active participation of artists. The Internet is an
extraordinary means of constructing social capital.
As a tool for expression, the Internet permits each person to
disseminate his ideas, his opinions. As a tool for duplication,
it permits the circulation of these things, their distribution,
eventually their enrichment through the commentary of others...
New social networks thus are mobilized, to develop alternatives
-- for example more equitable commercial practices, and more
dependable financial structures -- and to develop counter -
movements, such as the movements of opposition to international
business meetings, as at Seattle.
Knowledge, and collective discussion, can be of the same level of
quality as those which envelop the powerful. They can create a
new perspective for the construction of a more just world, and
the avoidance of dramatic consequences which accompany our
current global situation and the inequalities which it engenders.
But the construction of social networks demands specifics -- in
know - how, and in knowing - how - to - live. So -- New
Abilities, for a New Democracy. The labor movement of the
beginning of the last century learned to read and to write, so as
to publish their tracts, for convincing their co - workers to
organize. Activists of the 21st century have to learn the
keyboard and the mouse, and the rhythms and social procedures
appropriate to these new tools, which are simultaneously more
relational -- one speaks as though one is among friends, when one
wishes to contruct a consensus which will underlie grand
movements -- and more intrusive -- email already being perceived
as a tool which receives, and creates, behaviors very different
from those resulting simply from reading journals.
Associations of popular education, in the middle of the last
century, developed a form of popular thinking adapted to
technological constraints -- if one thinks of "underground films"
-- and to the political perspectives of the period -- chiefly
organized within the nation - state, and focussing on the social
struggle within the corporation.
How will these associations of popular education accommodate the
change of the current era, and with that the change of
technological tool -- to the network, or better to the "network
of networks" -- all as an overture to the change of perspectives
-- such as the global dimension of problems, now, the importance
of the ecology crisis, the persistence of misery in the countries
of The South, and the increasing inequalities?
I thank the Fe'de'ration franc,aise des Maisons des Jeunes et de
la Culture -- which is itself an association for popular
education -- for having organized these meetings for the
discussion of such issues, and for having permitted me to express
myself, by way of introduction, in presenting these questions
before you.
Herve' Le Crosnier Caen, le 25 mars 2002
[translated by JK: the original is to - be - installed online, in
Le Crosnier's eloquent French, at --
http://users.info.unicaen.fr/~herve/publications/2002/mantes ]
--oOo--
Editor's note by JK:
If some of the points which Le Crosnier makes here sound
unfamiliar, to US Americans, let me just say that they are very
familiar nowadays to nearly anyone outside of the US. I keep
hearing same or similar, myself, from correspondents seemingly
everywhere, elsewhere -- from Russia, from Japan, from Britain,
from Germany where unemployment just has reached 10% again and as
a result the new Schroeder government suddenly is under siege,
from Canadian Americans, and from Mexican Americans, and from
others all over "Latin" America...
For example: Le Crosnier's contrast of the "consumer" versus the
"citizen" roles, in Internet development and usage --
"Too often... the 'Silicon Valleys' content themselves
with promoting their networks for corporations alone. The
citizen's role is either ignored, or reduced to a
publicity stunt for use by the municipality."
-- or the several strange realities of "copyright" --
"Copyright is a matter of balancing the needs of
artists... and the needs of all of society... Currently,
however, certain zealots of copyright see only one side
of the balance..."
"Now everyone worries for the author, who will be robbed
by copying, by library borrowing, by the sharing of
cassettes among friends... The belief is that we are
aiding Flaubert, but we find ourselves enlisted in the
service of Vivendi, or of Disney, or of Elsevier or
Microsoft..."
"... no, you do not rob an author when you use a work
which you have not purchased -- you circulate your
culture, a thing which brings us to buy other works, in fact."
"The US Revolution -- their independence from England --
was made possible because the journals of cities in the
13 states were able to reprint the information which they
derived from the journals of neighboring cities, and thus
they circulated the news and organized the human networks
which brought the Republic into being. Information is a
social object..."
-- or some of the newer, and grimmer, realities of new approaches
to education, and to "digital library" service --
"The free play of competition, in a sector so fundamental
as education, encourages more knowledge which is directly
applicable, than it does the diffusion of knowledge which
is transmissible..."
"A library pays for a 'subscription licence' to a
journal... if anything goes wrong, pfffffffft, the
journal disappears from your screen... And don't even ask
about making an inhouse copy of the articles which
interest you -- it is so simple to return to the source,
each time, that it no longer is possible to copy the
articles..."
The more extreme arguments on all of this which I myself hear
nowadays are made by activists in India, environment ministers in
East Africa, disillusioned former entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia
and in Argentina -- one of the more responsible activists, quoted
here by Le Crosnier, in fact operates from Penang, in Malaysia.
So it may not be France, but the US, which is isolated and alone,
in much of this -- and so these are points which many in the US
now really do need to hear... It is not so much a matter of
agreeing, as it is of ceasing the denial which assumes that the
entire world agrees with the US now.
Coming from the French, in this instance, this is the advice of
friends: and as such -- and whether it is wrong or right -- at
least it should be listened to, I believe. A few in the US, so
far, have heard these cries -- but not many.
Joyeux Noe:l & Bonne Anne'e, to everyone.
--oOo--
FYI France (sm)(tm) e-journal ISSN 1071 - 5916
*
| FYI France (sm)(tm) is a monthly electronic
| journal published since 1992 as a small-scale,
| personal experiment, in the creation of large-
| scale "information overload", by Jack Kessler.
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--hjlm--
