On Tue, 28 Jan 1997 10:30:17 -0500 Sam Lanfranco
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> A recent posting to CLICK4HP included the following
passage which is so
> pregnant with presumptions that I am having to constrain myself to comment
> on only a few of the presumptions and them implications. The posting was
> well intended so I hope that individual doesn't take too great an
> exception to using this exerpt from their prose.

I can only say ditto except that I would like to use it in
reference to Sam's own post.


> This is what I would call a consumerist approach to the existance of the
> internet.

For many people, a consumerist approach is very reasonable
- the original poster was looking at Internet demographics
and quite rightly pointed out the biased demographics of
the Internet. Whilst access requires an investment in a
consumer appliance (be it web tv or personal computer) and
ongoing line access fees, not to mention telephone line
access, the Internet population will be weighted towards
the not poor in the world. The following figure are quite
interesting:

40 million or so on the Internet,
3 billion or so do not have even the plain old telephone
system at a personal/family/village level.

Sam takes another approach, that of the Digerati:

"Cybertouts and infoprophets among the digerati, from Alvin
Toffler to Nicholas Negroponte, Howard Rheingold to
Stewart Brand, Steve Jobs to Bill Gates, have for nearly a
generation now promised a new world of equality,
empowerment, and ease if only everyone could `log on' or
would `get wired'. Like so many other bits of computer
`vapourware', however, performance thus far has not matched
the promises"

from `The Politics of Cyberschooling at the Virtual
University', Timothy Luke, The Virtual University -
Symposium, Melbourne University, November 1996.



> The other
> approach is to see it as a territory in which social process will develop
> and in which -for good or bad- humans will pursue human pursuits. It is a
> place to make things, and to make things happen. It is only a place to
> 'find things' if someone else has taken the time to make them.

Sam sees cyberspace as a new frontier, one that is pregnant
with opportunity, in which a new world, a new society can
be made, and for those of us who get there first, we have
the opportunity to make a difference, to stake out a claim
on the best land, to write new laws and address old
inequities.

> Other countries are using public kiosks to connect
homeless people to
> social services, to emergency aid, and - to their families in a
> non-threatening venue -.

Sam presented this as positive but think about what it
means - a homeless person, with a better than average
chance of never having owned their own computer, or having
used one in the workplace, now has the opportunity of
negotiating this technology to access social services,
emergency aid; that may once have been accessed over the
counter, talking to a human being, one with more compassion
than a public kiosk. And lets not be naive. The reason
they're putting these kiosks in place is to cut down on the
number of human beings providing these services.

> There is a lesson here. The internet is not a virtual
'big box' goods
> outlet. Women, when asked about intended internet use, smartly always list
> 'shopping' in last place.

Bill Gates disagrees about the goods outlet:

"When you hear the phrase `information highway', rather
than seeing a road, imagine a marketplace or exchange ...
digital information of all kinds, not just as money, will
be the new medium of exchange in this market"
- The Road Ahead, p 6

> We now have a new frontier before us. It is neither a glass half empty nor
> a glass half full. It is a place to stand and a place to build. Or future
> will depend on what we build there, not on whether it has boxing day
> sales, or has my shoe size.

I have had this same debate with Sam before. I do not
denigrate his energy and enthusiasm to use the Internet for
good, but I do not agree with his metaphysical vision that
the Internet and network/computer technologies are somehow
inherently benevolent.

That the Internet will have a profound effect on the nature
of global society, we can agree on, but the implications
are not all good.

It needs to be looked at historically. The Internet started
out as a research network, an acdemic community, that was
self-regulating, and had accepted modes of behaviour.
"information wants to be free". However, once the research
institutions got it right, the commercial world wanted in
and they have got in. The Internet is/will become
increasingly commercial in orientation, but this is simply
redressing the balance, so that the Internet will better
reflect the nature of our society (except for the
demographics :->).

I could perhaps even go further and suggest that
the Internet will exacerbate inequality in the world as new
barriers of prejudice are raised between those who
communicate globally as superhighwaymen and those who do
not.

Craig
A commuter on the Information Super highway

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Craig Silva, Electronic Outreach Program Officer
Victorian Health Promotion Foundation, Melbourne Australia
e-mail: [log in to unmask], Tel: 61 3 9345 3211
Post: PO Box 154, Carlton Sth Victoria. 3053. Australia
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