Articoli
Political & Social Implications of the Net
Newsgroups: alt.society.civil-liberty
From: aq817@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Steve Crocker)
Subject: Political & Social Implications of the Net Date: 5 Jul 1994
09:14:07 GMT Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland,
Ohio (USA)
Message-ID: <2vb88v$gtq@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu Lines: 850
The following is a little something I wrote up a couple of years back,
with a few update notes attached to the end. I'm posting it here because
I think it has relevance to the occasional voices on this thread who have
suggested that the appropriate arena in which to conduct the fight for
Constitutional freedom is in information space. I hope at least some here
will find it of interest. -Steve This document is a heavily edited compilation
of my writing on a variety of occasions on the implications of the Net
for the questions of political freedom and democracy in the U.S. Because
it is a compilation, different sections may vary in emphasis, style, language
and clarity. I've tried to smooth out the rough spots and to the extent
possible work this document into a coherent whole. If I wasn't entirely
successful, feel free to concentrate on the sections that have something
worthwhile to say to you, and ignore the rest.
-Steve Crocker 10/9/92 (Spell checked 10/29/92) THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL
IMPLICATIONS OF THE NET There have been increasing conversations lately
about the importance of the Net as a vehicle for positive change in our
society. I want to set down a few of my thoughts about why the Net is
important, what forces might threaten its viability as a force for change,
and some priority issues to be considered by those who have a commitment
to maintaining and expanding the Net as an uncensored medium of widespread
communication. PROLOGUE - THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN BANDWIDTH The word "bandwidth"
is one of those unique terms which is almost universally socialized within
the cultural environment of the net, but relatively little known off-line,
except in highly technical contexts. On the Net it is understood by the
technically literate as a fairly precise measure of information transmissible
per unit time. To others, it has a more casually defined meaning, relating
to the amount of information that can be comfortably dealt with in a given
context. I will be using the term primarily in this more casual sense,
but with the technical meaning consistently lurking in the background
to more richly inform the metaphors. So, let me begin with a few thoughts
on limited bandwidth, and how the variety of responses to the bandwidth
problem have helped both shape and pervert society. Limited bandwidth
is the dilemma faced by the anarchist who advocates absolute political
freedom, and the LSD enthusiast (being epistemologically anarchist), who
advocates total PERCEPTUAL freedom. ANARCHISM REFUTED - THE NEED FOR HIERARCHY
We cannot know everything, we cannot even pay attention effectively to
everything in our immediate surroundings, and as social beings, we cannot
pay attention to all possible inputs, or even all relevant inputs from
those around us. So the solution is structured limitation of our attention.
We pay attention within certain more or less rigidly defined patterns
of time and space. In addition our attention is organized hierarchically.
That is to say that our attention is focussed on certain trusted "gatekeeper"
concepts or individuals or institutions which we permit to direct and
structure our attention within their particular subordinate domains. For
example we may trust a friend or a literary critic to recommend a good
book or Time, CBS and the AP to define our news. Within individual perceptions,
concepts play a similar role. Something that appears genuinely new we
examine closely in all its uniqueness, while something that fits in one
of our existing pigeonholes we will respond to automatically, based on
its concept-label. So if this is a perhaps regrettable but necessary function,
where is the problem? Are not the conservative critics of LSD philosophy
right all along? Do we not NEED perceptual and conceptual structures to
make any sense out of the universe at all? Do we not dissolve them, even
partially and temporarily at our peril? Is it not true that society could
never truly live at the intense fever pitch of revolutionary change, in
which all may be questioned, and the pillow you sleep on tonight may be
washed away with the flood of the new dawn? BUT ALL HIERARCHIES ARE NOT
CREATED EQUALLY USEFUL Welllll.... Yes and then again hmmmmm.... Some
time ago I got hold of the book "Coup D'Etat - A Practical Handbook
by Edward Luttwak. Although I did not read most of it, I could not help
but be struck by his opening observation that in a coup d'etat, unlike
a popular revolution, it is the security force of the State which is subverted
and caused to strike against the State. The parallel here should escape
no one. Our structures of percept, concept and individual and social attention
are the security structures of our individual and social consciousness.
They perform the necessary function of insulating us from the raw flood
of pure information (pure chaos) which at absolute intensity would be
survivable only by the Creator. But what happens when the gateways of
our consciousness are manned by alien sentries? What happens when the
security forces of our mind are subverted by those whose purpose is not
to Create but to destroy? We are in deeeeep shit! The LSD revolution attempted
to address this problem by breaking down partially and temporarily the
structures of consciousness, in the hope that from the raw flood of information
could be Created new conceptual systems which would be more appropriate
to the latent structures present in the Chaos. The main reason it didn't
work appears to have been signal to noise ratio. To descend from poetic
metaphysics and speak plainly, LSD makes just too darn good a brainwashing
tool (although perhaps brain-sculpting would be the truly appropriate
phrase). It is just too easy for unscrupulous people to feed Acid to those
too inexperienced to judge their trip environment, and subject them to
the imprinting of proprietary control structures (and in the case of eg.
Charlie Manson, extraordinarily destructive ones). Thus Acid, which once
appeared to hold hope as a solution, now appears as part of the problem.
Well, obviously we have to address the bandwidth problem somehow. Equally
obviously this is much too important to be left to the Usual Suspects.
THE LAST UNCENSORED MASS MEDIUM WE LIVE IN A FREE COUNTRY (NOT!) I have
called the Net the last (accidentally) uncensored mass medium. It does
not take a rocket scientist to realize that "they" decide what
appears in newspapers, magazines, books, and on radio and TV, whereas
WE decide what will appear on the Net. If anybody sincerely believes that
the presently restricted level of access to the more conventional mass
media is due to the completely accidental interplay of technical, economic
and social forces, you may well not sympathize with the rest of this analysis.
If you feel that access was restricted at least in part due to a deliberate
effort to prevent the widespread dissemination of viewpoints that might
threaten the "stability" of the status quo, then don't feel
like the Lone Ranger. It should not have escaped anybody who has been
paying attention that America is presently ruled by an oligarchical elite
which is, if not yet outrightly fascist, certainly proto-fascist. It is
clear that such a group can only maintain its rule while preserving nominally
democratic forms of government if it is able to establish limits on allowable
large-scale public discourse. In other words the oligarchy needs a veto
power on ideas that can be effectively expressed in mass forums. As long
as the mass forums were limited to the 3 major networks and the 2 wire
services and a handful of leading newspapers and magazines, it was fairly
straightforward to accomplish this level of control behind the scenes
through old boy networks, financial influence and the time honored principles
of "follow the leader" and "monkey see, monkey do".
As communication becomes less centrally controlled, it becomes increasingly
possible that "rogue elements" from outside the oligarchical
consensus might earn the attention of a significant number of people.
To forestall this possibility the oligarchy needs a social consensus establishing
mechanisms and conditions of censorship. This is one of the not so hidden
agendas of the "PC" controversy - whether a category of "hate
speech" can be created which can be suppressed either by law as the
liberals would have it or by the voluntary exercise of property rights
on the part of the privately owned mass media as would be preferred by
the free enterprisers. WHO CONTROLS SOCIALIZED IMAGES CONTROLS BEHAVIOR
Our behavior is largely controlled by the image bank we carry around in
our brains. These images are our primary tools of conceptualization, which
we use in understanding who we are, where we are situated in society and
in history, and what actual or potential significance our activities have
in life. To draw an extreme example, somebody who grew up reading biographies
of Abraham Lincoln or Amelia Earheart will view their aspirations in life
quite differently from someone who grew up watching Budwiser commercials.
Our SOCIAL behavior is similarly directed by the images we have SOCIALIZED
- images we collectively share with those around us. Nuclear power plant
operator Homer Simpson is a socialized image. The "nuplex" concept
of integrated nuclear-industrial complexes as described by nuclear engineer
Jon Gilbertson, among others, is not. If I want to comment on some issue
of the day to a cab driver, a co-worker, or somebody I see in the bar,
it had better be an issue which has been "validated" by showing
up on the evening news or in USA Today (or in other circles, The New York
Times, the Washington Times-Post, the New Republic/National Review, etc.)
Sure, if I know another person REALLY WELL, I can talk to them about something
that I thought up myself, or read in a "fringe" publication.
But to be able to talk to casual acquaintances about issues, it is necessary
to repeat sound bites. BUT TECHNOLOGY MARCHES ON And then along comes
the Net. Because of decentralized origination of messages, the inability
of one poster to interrupt another, the lack of a mechanism to censor
content, and the speedy but non-sychnronous mode of the conversation it
is possible for "fringe" ideas to be heard and to rise or fall
on their merits, alongside conventional ideas. Thus, we have a real possibility,
for the first time in many years, to create communities of thought in
which our socialized images are constructed in a participatory fashion,
and can reflect reality as we actually experience it, rather than as some
central authority has decided it is appropriate to appear. To most of
the world off-line Danny Casolaro, the investigative reporter who died
investigating the network of corrupt government officials and others he
called "The Octopus", is still "Danny Who?". On the
Net a small but active community exists that believes that knowing what
happened to this inquiring mind will give us an important clue to what
happened to our country. And the Net is not just an information source.
The Net is interactive. Increasing the aggregate bandwidth available to
people concerned with stopping the New World (Fascist) Order will make
possible new levels of conversation and consensus not possible under more
limiting regimes. Ultimately, we may actually realize the ideal of the
old New Left (and the Founding Fathers !), of democratic participation
of the people in shaping political programs. I keep coming back to the
image of old Ben Franklin and his printing press. Franklin understood
that the British Empire was a dinosaur. Its bandwidth was no longer sufficient
to support the extent of its body. So he used the innovative medium of
his time to CREATE bandwidth, thus setting into motion a form of social
organization which could move faster and plan smarter than its obsolete
competitor. So today we have the Net, the last accidentally uncensored
mass medium in existence. Is it a toy of the rich and the ivory tower,
or is it potent? Already, even in its adolescence, the stories are beginning
to be told. Whispered through keyboards at midnight, downloaded around
half a world through a web of invisible satellite links and gossamer fiber
optic are the legends that tell of a time when brave men and women stood
and fought and fell and died for a thing called freedom in a place called
Tianemen Square, and the Net stood and fought beside them, and though
it did not in the end defeat the Enemy, the Enemy was not able to kill
it. So, will we allow such legends, such benign myths, to shape our sense
of who we are? Will we allow ourself to be possessed by the vision of
a Net whose purpose is to help create and support HEROES? Or will we dismiss
it all with a keystroke, and get back to the REAL FUN STUFF on alt.flame.joe.schmuck.the.world's.greatest.poophead
? Maybe Marshall McLuhan was right. Maybe the medium is the message. Maybe
the Medium is the Movement. Maybe the only way to ultimately defeat an
organism such as the Octopus is to create an organism of superior design
which will be capable of outthinking, outorganizing and outmaneuvering
it. Maybe the Net is already the existing nucleus of such an organism.
The thing which has permitted the Octopus and its masters to rule while
maintaining outwardly democratic forms is the combination of an other-directed
culture combined with the ability to shape the images portrayed in the
national mass media, and thus shape our socialized perception of political
and cultural reality as a set of programmed constructs. If the Net Culture
already existing in usenet, Fidonet, and other anarcho-democratic forums
can actually be ported to an expanded on-line mass community, then the
Oligarchy would ultimately be faced with either relinquishing power, or
abandoning the mask of democracy. The Net presents the irony of a subversive
institution originated and largely financed by the government. I like
to think that some social genius in the long ago days of early ArpaNet
and Usenet foresaw the spread of networking beyond the realms of .gov,
.mil, .com, and .edu. I like to think that one of the reasons we are configured
with decentralized routing, decentralized origination, and redundant links
is that that same genius foresaw the need for a network that would exhibit
"survivability" not only in the face of enemy attack, but in
the face of an attack by our own rulers. But whether the architects of
the Net wrought better than they knew, or exactly as they intended, the
result is the same. We enjoy the last uncensored, and for the moment uncensorable
mass medium in the U.S., and perhaps in the world. This has got to be
making certain people rather unhappy. (Unless anybody thinks that George
Bush and his ilk ENJOY having all the facts and all the plausible rumors
of their crimes and treasons posted here for an ever growing number of
the educated elite to read). So what is the solution? TWO BASIC PRINCIPLES
WORTH DEFENDING A recommendation - maintain at all costs decentralized
administration of Net related hardware and redundant links. NO SINGLE
INSTITUTION, INDIVIDUAL OR ORGANIZED VIEWPOINT SHOULD BE IN A POSITION
TO MAKE A CREDIBLE THREAT TO SUBSTANTIALLY DISRUPT TRAFFIC. I think this
is worth codifying as Crocker's first law of net.freedom. And the second
is like unto it: CONTINUE THE CUSTOM THAT MOST GROUPS ARE PUBLICALLY READABLE
AND A SUBSTANTIAL NUMBER OF THESE ALLOW UNMODERATED POSTING. BALANCING
FREEDOM AND STRUCTURE - THE RIGHT QUESTIONS The central operational problem
for defining a Net which is simultaneously structured and free would appear
to be the technical one of providing gatekeeping and attention structuring
mechanisms which are firm and stable enough to perform their function
but are sufficiently decentralized and flexible to prevent them being
taken over by aliens [*]. If I had the answer to that one, I'd stop working
for a living and run for God. I could probably manage a few provocative
suggestions, though. [*] By "aliens" I refer to the Bad Guys,
The Net-Fascists, the Conspiracy, the Reactionaries, George Bush, the
FBI/CIA/NSA/IRS/ETC, the Politically Correct Liberals, the Corporate Culture,
the Yuppies, the Media Elite, the Entertainment Industry, the Mindless,
and anyone else who we can agree by consensus ought not to be allowed
to dominate our consciousness, our culture or our Net. (Obviously this
is my intensely personal list of villains - your mileage may vary). AS
THE NET GROWS - ISSUES TO CONFRONT In many ways, the Net is only an adolescent,
with the incredible combination of brilliance and stupidity and of promise
and rampant silliness which has probably characterized adolescence forever.
To cause it to actually live up to its potential, there are things which
need to happen and things which need to be avoided. EXPANSION I think
we all have wished that the Net were more universal. We are vastly underrepresented
in areas such as poor people, industrial workers, housewives, young children,
policy makers, and senior professionals. We need to find effective means
of outreach to all these groups, and more. And that's only in North America.
The extension of the Net into the Third World is a problem, parallel in
some ways to that of including the poor and under-educated of North America,
but also complicated by unique problems of infrastructure and political
economy. The question of technical and educational barriers to access
is relevant here. Many poor people also lack basic educational skills.
Even many people who may be high school graduates who work and support
a family may lack the familiarity with computers to feel comfortable with
today's Net interfaces. To remedy this, we need not only conventional
computer literacy, and more user-friendly interfaces, but also more hands-on
access to the Net in schools, churches, union halls, libraries, and the
like. I believe that the Net can and should play an important role in
making representative democracy work in the 21st century in the way it
was envisioned in the 18th. I hope to be around when the time comes that
open advisory groups of net.citizens routinely advise their representatives
on the issues of the day, and when the net.community is strong enough
at the polls to defeat any representative who routinely and casually disregards
the net.consensus. And by that time, this had better be a Net of the people,
by the people, and for the people, or else we will have wrought nothing
better than an Athenian style "democracy" existing on the backs
of a disenfranchised lower class. Expansion is not an unmixed blessing,
however. As we expand there is a danger of having the cultural traditions
which have been developed by trial and error over the years overwhelmed.
These customs, although not perfect, have by and large been successful
in allowing the Net to WORK. A first approximation suggestion would be
to attempt to manage Net expansion in such a way that at any given moment,
the population of Net citizens online for less than (say) 6 months should
constitute a minority of the total Net population. This will allow our
culture to evolve in a somewhat orderly way, rather than simply being
swept away by ignorance, well intentioned or otherwise. ECONOMICS This
is a central issue related to the problem of expansion. To those of us
with moderate or better incomes, computers and Net access appear to be
cheap. But cheap is relative. To those for who a phone or an automobile
is only a dream (and I count several such among my own acquaintance) Net
access is an essentially meaningless luxury. However, it's not QUITE as
bad as that sentence makes it sound. Most people who don't have cars still
find somebody to give them rides. Most people who don't have phones have
phones somewhere they can use, and, amazingly, even many of the very poor
manage to have a TV and even have a friend or relative with Cable. So,
I think if we can get the price of a net capable box down around that
of a used TV, and a Net connection down around the price of a phone line,
or of cable, we can probably provide at least sporadic Net access to all
but the bottom 10% or so of the population. My recommendation here is
to establish a means of cheap or free Net Access. Anybody who has a phone
or a TV should find it economically feasible to access the Net. An absolute
upper limit should be a cost comparable to getting cable, but I would
prefer to see it substantially lower. OVERLOAD This problem exists on
two distinct levels. The bandwidth of the available hardware does not
YET appear to be seriously threatened by the growing volume of traffic,
but to anybody who can recognize an exponential curve when they see one,
it is surely only a matter of time. It appears that between the NREN initiative
and the falling price of net capable boxes and mass storage stat particular
saturation point is still comfortably far away. (Although NREN does raise
questions of control - to be addressed further on). The danger of HUMAN
overload is more serious. Already, a limiting factor in the usefulness
of the Net to individuals is the inability of a person to read more than
a minute fraction of even the news they are actually interested in. This
will never be completely solved, but there are both technical and organizational
steps which can alleviate it. At least one question is probably answerable
and should be addressed as a preliminary to any such effort. That is "What,
in practice, is the effective limit (actually a range) to the amount of
News, Mail, etc which can be read per day or per week by the "average"
Net dweller. This would serve to suggest an upper range to the size of
an on-line community of posters (newsgroup in Usenet, Echo in Fidonet,
etc.) It would also give some parameters as to how many online communities
of varying size a Net being could effectively participate in. All this
merely gives specific content to the bandwidth problem as it exists in
our particular medium. By itself it could serve as the rationale for the
most repressive forms of Net-Fascism. Further insight is still needed.
On the technical end we need better newsreaders. I normally post with
a really primitive homebrew reader here on Cleveland FreeNet whose powers
of selectivity are nearly non-existent. I have used rn and it is clearly
better, but the interface is not very intuitive beyond the most simple
functions. Rumor has it that trn offers more flexibility, but I haven't
seen it and can't comment. We need simple and intuitive software to answer
questions like "Which newsgroups, which threads, which articles,
and material from which individuals contain the kind of content I've said
I'm interested in. Show me enough of a brief summary so that I can decide
what I want to read now, later, or not at all. I like the way this poster
thinks, tell me about what else they have posted. I'm interested in what
is new, particularly in the newsgroups I read most often. Let me see a
summary of the new threads. This article is especially interesting. Are
there other articles anywhere on the system with similar content?"
In short the News Reader (both Software and Human) needs to have improved
mechanisms for searching the News base. These need to be simultaneously
more powerful and more user friendly. (Yes, I know that's normally a trade-off
but maybe with a truly excellent design team...?) I guess I'm thinking
of something like Hypertext indexing with tunable parameters, with the
tunability transparent to those who aren't sophisticated enough to use
it. That means some Real Good defaults, as well as a cottage industry
to provide parameter packages for those who want Different or even Better
defaults. Now none of this, as far as I can tell, is beyond the range
of today's computing power or programming technique, but somebody needs
to DO it. The problem of noise is always going to be with us. I deal with
it on alt.conspiracy by just not reading any discussions on Holocaust
Revisionism or detailed physical evidence of the JFK case. With a newsreader
based on my wish list above, I'd do the same, but a lot more elegantly.
On the organizational end, we have a lot of what we need already. There
are mechanisms for starting new groups when old groups get too big, and
mechanisms for creating alternative forums like mailing lists and moderated
groups to meet special needs. We need to keep an eye on these as the Net
grows, to be sure that it is always easy to "move west" when
the local territory gets too crowded or too civilized. At the same time,
we need a counterweight to the newsgroup splitting mechanisms to encourage
overlapping membership so groups do not become too insular. ACCESS CONTROL
- MANAGED PARANOIA On the Internet scene, the two major events catalyzing
a "phase change" in network management attitudes toward security
were unquestionably the publication of Cliff Stoll's "The Cuckoo's
Egg" and the release of the notorious "Internet Worm" by
Robert Morris Jr. WHO STOLL OUR ACCESS? Lest I be misunderstood, I certainly
don't think Cliff Stoll is wittingly participating in a campaign against
net.freedom. I think he believes he is sounding a warning against an evil
which might have destroyed the Net had he not acted. Look at the results,
however. One of the oldest regional networks is MERIT in Michigan, which
interestingly enough administers the Internet backbone under contract
with NSF. They have long maintained an anonymous dialin service from major
Michigan cities which allowed users anywhere in Michigan to log on remotely
to their home account. With the rise of the tcp/ip protocol they implemented
a telnet client available again through anonymous dialin which allowed
remote access to any host on the Internet. In the wake of the Cuckoo's
Egg and rtm incidents, the NSF announced a policy of "no anonymous
access to the backbone". Merit quickly complied by restricting the
dialin telnet client to accessing the regional subnet only. From a naive
perspective this sounds perfectly reasonable, as any good repressive policy
should. The effect, however, is to erect an economic barrier to Net access
from Michigan. Although MERIT has never charged a fee for dialin telnet,
and still nominally does not do so, there is a fairly substantial fee
for setting up a MERIT account which would comply with the "no anonymous
use" rule. Alternatively, one may acquire an account at a MERIT member
site which will be recognized by the MERIT authorization server. Policies
on these are still in flux as of this writing, however I haven't heard
of any of them that are going to be cheap. The debate over subsidy versus
cost recovery for Net access is a legitimate one. However, I think it
is only fair that it be conducted in the light of day with the issues
being called by their correct names. To sneak a charge for Net access
in the back door under the guise of a security issue as was done in this
case is cowardly and shameful. JUNIOR AND SENIOR "No job's too big
No job's too small We're Father and Son We do it all." -Construction
company advertising jingle Although I believe Cliff Stoll to be innocent
of sinister intent in this affair, the case of the rtm worm is a little
different. Maybe I've just been reading alt.conspiracy too long :), but
I can't overlook the possibility of some sort of collusion between Robert
Morris Jr. of the rtm worm and Robert Morris Sr. of the National Security
Agency's National Computer Security Center. Robert Morris Sr. figures
prominently in the Cuckoo's Egg as one of the few high level officials
to show serious concern about hacker attacks. He introduces Stoll to the
Assistant Director of NSA and arranges for him to tell his story to the
National Telecommunications Security Committee. We are not told whether
Morris also encouraged Stoll to publish his popular account of this affair,
but it is certainly a plausible possibility. Then in 1988 we encounter
the famous rtm worm which brings down a substantial fraction of the Internet.
When the dust settles, the author of this worm emerges as Robert Morris
Jr., the son of Robert Morris the famous security expert. Well, I suppose
it could be some kind of innocent Oedipal thing, rebellion against the
father figure and all that. Or it could have been that the famous claim
of the hacker legions finally came true for once. "We did it as a
service to alert you to the holes in your security". Whatever the
reason, the rtm worm along with the Cuckoo's Egg forced an attitude shift
among system administrators in which security began to take priority over
service and helped create an attitude in which casual access to the Net
by unauthorized people was ended almost before it began. CENSORSHIP AND
CONTROL But all is still not well. Although the potential rush of great
unwashed citizens into Internet access has been slowed, if not stopped,
Usenet is still alive and growing and as uncensored as ever. I would not
put it past the enemy for a minute to try to attack Usenet based on the
existence of the sexually oriented newsgroups. This is, however, a blunt
instrument that may not by itself have the intended effect. It's not like
the oligarchy really CARES who reads alt.sex.bestiality.hamster.aluminum.baseball.bat.
I think they probably do MUCH stranger things to their own hamsters in
the privacy of their off-line existences. It could, however, be used as
a precedent to encourage individual sites to drop "objectionable"
newsgroups. And now we come to the curious case of the "Holocaust
Revisionists", who have been known to post huge quantities of material
to politically oriented newsgroups denying the existence of the Nazi extermination
of the Jews. In light of the sensitive nature of the subject, and their
complete lack of headway making converts to their views, I have began
to wonder if there might not be a hidden agenda at work here. Perhaps
the covert purpose of this mass of offensive material is to prove to any
"reasonable" person that free and open net.discussion of controversial
subjects does not work and ultimately cannot be permitted. Perhaps they
are intended as the "horrible example" of what happens when
people take freedom of speech seriously. Maybe they are here to show us
all that the First Amendment wasn't really such a great idea after all.
Does the idea of Holocaust Revisionism make you sick and angry? Congratulations.
You are reacting the way they want you to. Does it make you sick and angry
enough to want to close the Net to these people? Hopefully not. But if
not you, probably somebody a little quicker on the trigger and a little
less attached to the ideals of freedom. For if the Net is closed to such
as these, it can by that precedent be closed to anyone who is sufficiently
offensive to the powers that be. BANDWIDTH AGAIN But we have an intriguing
double-bind here. Gresham's Law in economics states that "bad money
drives out good". I wonder if we don't have a similar problem with
"noise driving out signal". When I show any of my friends alt.conspiracy
I always feel I have to apologize for the mass of Holocaust posting. There
are people I don't DARE show it to, because I don't expect them to have
the patience to pick and choose among the many garbage posts to find the
worthwhile ones. So is this how the Net ends? Do we either accept censorship,
let ourselves be drowned under the onslaught of noise, or finally find
the political newsgroups dropped from more and more sites as "objectionable"?
Or is there another solution? Can the accumulated wisdom of the hyperconsciousness
which IS the Net find an answer which compromises neither integrity or
survival? (See the section on OVERLOAD above for some suggestions). For
in the end, it really doesn't matter whether the Holocausters are doing
this on purpose or not. The threat is real either way. The Net, like any
young growing organism, has reached a crisis point at which it must mature
or die. COMMERCIALIZATION - ONLINE MATERIAL AS PRODUCT The question of
commercialization of online activity comes into play here in a couple
of forms. SHOULD FREEDOM OF INFORMATION BE FREE ? (WOULD YOU BELIEVE CHEAP?)
Much of the relative power imbalance between citizens on the one hand
and professional politicians or bureaucrats on the other stems from the
latter's greater access to specialized information. Citizens cannot responsibly
exercise their democratic responsibilities of oversight and advice to
government if they are deprived of timely and complete information on
government activities. The legal maxim "ignorance of the Law is no
excuse" becomes a mockery when the "law" occupies an ever
expanding stack of shelves at the local law school library and the only
people NOT "ignorant of the law" are highly trained professionals
who sell the fruits of this knowledge for a substantial price. Much of
the problem alluded to above (which is fundamentally a form of the Human
Bandwidth problem) could be alleviated by a policy of easy online access
to legal and bureaucratic databases. However, now come services such as
Westlaw which offer to sell you such access for a substantial sum. Opposed
to them are access proposals from groups like the Taxpayer Asset's project
whose draft bill would mandate online access to Federal databases at only
the cost of providing access. Even should such a proposal be implemented,
however, it will be merely an important first step. A raw online data
base merely transfers the Human Bandwidth dilemma into the online environment.
The key issue is easy searchability. The user of a government document
access service needs to be able to quickly find documents and passages
relevant to their needs, without having to wade through a mass of noise.
Any online access service put into place needs to have the search and
interface technology in place to address that issue. THE THREAT OF "QUALITY"
Should "quality" productions, including multimedia and the writing
of high profile authorities become a dominant feature of Net traffic ?
Should large commercial BBS systems become a major player in the online
environment? Can we look forward to a Brave New Cyberspace in which anyone
can get Net access for $50 per month, read reports "cybercast"[*]
by the most prestigious on-line journalists, post freely to newsgroups,
all of which are moderated by only the most respected experts in their
fields, and say absolutely anything, with the obvious exception of posts
which are offensive, flaky, off the wall, or clearly a waste of limited
bandwidth? Gee whiz! Doesn't the thought make you positively drool? And
some late hot flashes. We all surely know by now that cyberpunk made the
cover of Time a few months back. Oldsters and historians will recall this
as the same scenario that launched the hippies. Time-Warner and other
entertaiment firms have expressed their intention to move agressively
into net.based delivery of their product (will they help put the "terminal"
back into "terminally stupid"?) And just two weeks ago, Delphi,
who had already recently purchased Bix, was bought out by Rupert Murdoch's
"news" organization. And now to mentionin one more point on
the graph. I was for a short time a "member" of Prodigy. Yep.
Prodigy. And yes, it's every bit as bad as people think, at least as far
as the technical limitations of the software and the authoritarian attitudes
of the management. But demographics, have they got demographics. What
I mean by that is that the human mix there is very different than here
on usenet, and in some very exciting ways. The advertising campaign which
was supposed to bring in computer-shy Yuppies and get them to buy plane
tickets on line ended up recruiting a mix which included many older folks
and women. These folks, though not techies are the kind of people who
will be the first to try something new which will expand their horizons.
The community was huge, easily rivaling usenet, and I saw only small parts
of it. But it was exciting. I spent most of my time among a community
of grass-roots populists organizing against the One World Government,
Outcome Based education, etc. Plus there was another fairly separate group
going after the JFK assasination. The folks there were more activist and
less abstract than here. Many of them used Prodigy to compare notes and
share support for their organizing efforts off-line (We here could take
lessons...). Then the blow fell. Prodigy changed its flat rate policy
to timed charges for access to the discussion forums (BB's). This was
done in a way to cause maximum resentment. I mean they didn't even try
to put up much of a front. Claims of financial necessity were made, but
oddly enough, strategies which would have enhanced revenue while retaining
the ability of affordable interpersonal communication were not considered.
For a couple of months, a mass migration to Genie appeared to be the way
to go. There were many Prodigy refugees there already, from an earlier
round of Prodigy repression dealing with email. Many still had dual membership
and were helping those who wanted to make the move. This was beginning
to gather steam when the other shoe dropped. Genie (General Electric)
followed Prodigy (IBM/Sears) into the netherworld of timed charges for
discussion groups. Last I heard, those who could make it into their lifeboats
were heading for National Videotext Network which still offers flat rate.
I haven't heard how this ended up. Just last night, I stumbled onto a
monster thread over on misc.legal dealing with the problems of copyrighted
material on the Net. Apparently many sysadmins already have dropped alt.binaries.pictures.erotica,
due in part to concern over liability due to copyright violations (under
recent law, apparently a Federal felony!) by people scanning in gifs from
their favorite magazines. One fellow emphasized his support for the freedom
of speech for all sorts of controversial and obnoxious folks on his system,
but was vehement in his zeal to "call the FBI" on copyright
violators. In the June 6 issue of the New Yorker is an interesting story
by John Seabrook (who did the email interview with Bill Gates) about getting
flamed and how violated and uspset it made him. Lots of not explicitly
stated suggestion that maybe somebody will need to control all this, and
some very confusing material suggesting to the non-technical that viruses
or worms may be sent via email messages. "Is this free speech?".
But the chilling passage in the article is on page 77 where the writer
says Dr. Clinton C. Brooks, the N.S.A.'s lead scientist on the Clipper
Chip told me, "You won't have a Waco in Texas, you'll have a Waco
in cyberspace. You could have a cult, spaeking to each other through encyrption,
that suddenly erupts in society - well programmed, well organized - and
then suddenly disappears again." Getting scared yet? And now comes
the June 13th issue of the Nation with an article called Static in Cyberspace.
This is a critical look at the concept of fredom of speech on the Net,
complete with Serdar Argic, Karla Homolka, gun control flames, and libel
cases. The article never says "there oughta be a law". But then,
it doesn't really need to, does it? -Steve