Feb 17 - Feb 19, 1998

Daniel Salcedo wrote:
While the cyber-pundits discuss the r/evolution of the Internet and the effect it has on all members of our societies, the private sector is racing ahead actually implementing far reaching, precedent setting innovations. I just returned from a week in Silicon Valley where I attended a series of closed strategic meetings by firms who are ramping up for wiring most parts of the globe with astonishing bandwidth. All this will happen without, even some might add in spite of, government intervention and support.

I have found in the past that the claims of those who say the private sector is doing it all too often end up being hype rather than reality.

Instead of there being support from the private sector for figuring out what is needed and how to encourage government to support what is needed, the funding that would otherwise go to such efforts ends up going to the private sector to do something that benefits some in the private sector, leaving the rest of us out in the cold.

The public schools are not being wired in the area I am in -- or if they are, it is for very narrow uses of the Net, rather than for the liberating and educating aspects that those who have worked to spread the Net as Netizens have identified.

If the private sector, or elements of it, want to do some of what is needed to help the Net spread, they need to have open meetings and to welcome input from those not in the private sector, and to welcome opening up government policy processes to those not in the private sector.

Howard Rheingold wrote:
The question of who shall speak for the public, the commons, the living planet, is perhaps THE question of the information and communications revolutions, if you think of the kind of lives our grandchildren are likely to live.

But isn't that why there has to be a broad public discussion on these issues, rather than decisions being made by government or the private sector behind closed doors?

Taking care of the commons is, by definition, NOT the role of business --

But too often business claims that its interest is the only interest. Yet the viewpoint that I have heard from business interests is a very narrow view that doesn't recognize the need for a public sector or that there that people are citizens rather than just customers.

And in respect to the battles, at least in the U.S., over the future of the Net, rarely is there any acknowledgment from business interests that there are Netizens online who have built and contributed to the Net and who are working to make it grow and flourish. These Netizens have contributed because they recognize the Net as a significant new means of mass communication and want it to spread and be available to all so all can contribute to it and to each other.

the combination of technology, industrialism, and capitalism that has shaped the modern world emerged during an era when the commons were forcibly enclosed in England and France, and converted into private property. I can't speak for the rest of the world, but in America, people

But you are leaving out that in the process of such changes there were also changes in the form of government, where it was recognized that unbridled private accumulation devastates the land. For example in Great Britain it took about 50 years to develop a shorter hours law, (between 1802 and 1848) but that was necessary to stop the devastation of people by some factory owners who cast out the injured whether they were women or children and left them to be cared for by government after they were injured in the quest to make profits in the factories that grew up in this period.

Similarly in France there was the recognition that sovereignty had to reside in the population, as citizens, rather than in a hereditary government.

After the French revolution there was the understanding of the need to standardize laws, scientific measures, etc.

don't have a high degree of trust in the government to speak for the public interest in matters such as the shape of the communications media of

To the contrary, at least among the nonbusiness population there is understanding that if you don't regulate business, it will rob you blind.

The unbridled trusts that grew up by the end of the 19th century in the U.S. showed the need for muckraking, trust busting, etc. We don't need to go back to that period to understand that without government regulation, even business can't survive in an unregulated environment. (I once read a pamphlet about some of the comments from businesses about why they needed the Sherman anti trust legislation.)

tomorrow. Somehow, leadership must emerge from the private sector to at least begin acknowledging this problem.

But that isn't where leadership comes from historically. When Bell Labs was regulated it could give leadership, but it wasn't a private sector at the time, it was a regulated sector.

Similarly every set of laws I know of have required a hard fight on the part of the public, for example the laws establishing trade unions in the U.S.

It is interesting that during the 1930's there were hearings in Washington where businesses testified as to how they had to have long hours and miserable working conditions unless there were laws restricting their competitors from having such bad conditions.

But the laws I know of that grew up to make it possible to have industrial unions in the U.S. (unions for workers in large corporate entities like General Motors, etc.) took a hard struggle of workers to establish, as well as work by government and religious leaders (the LaFollette hearings in Washington documenting the elaborate spy system that corporations had set up to keep trade unions out of their factories.)

On the government side, either governments need to be reformed in some way I can't really foresee, or people need new means of protecting collective goods such as freedom of speech, the air we breathe, our genomes, the biosphere.

But the problem is that government isn't standing up to business, which is what government needs to do, and has to be forced to do by the efforts of people.

The Civil Rights movement in the U.S. showed the hard battle needed to gain certain very minimal civil rights for black people, but it wasn't that black people said government can't do it, instead they said that we need to force the kind of laws we need.

There are good reasons for the private sector to wire every school into the Internet. Who pays for access to bandwidth on an ongoing purpose. If the

But in a school I found recently that was supposedly 'wired' they blocked access to Usenet.

money has to come from already-threatened school budgets, what else must be sacrificed to afford the Net in every class after the wires have been pulled? Who designs, delivers, and pays for the training for teachers, and

But the point is that the schools I have seen in NYC at least aren't designing, delivering or paying for the training of teachers.

This is a problem that has to be solved, and claiming that business will wire the schools (probably it isn't even business but volunteer time of employees), leaves out the consideration of all these questions which are necessary to consider when trying to figure out if there ever will be Net access in schools in the U.S.

pays them for their extra time? Who pays for technical maintenance and ongoing user support? Who knows how to use this medium for true learning

Who are you saying knows?

I have heard one school say that they were told they had to hire a company to give them what they would have as Net access.

How would that company have any idea what kind of curriculum activity to use in developing and making the Internet available?

In another situation I know of a company was in charge of providing Usenet, they had a very limited feed and it took several months to establish any feed. And several times the feed stopped and there were no new messages in the feed they got. But the worst problem was that they wouldn't take any messages that originated from the school and so posting at the school was totally useless and therefore frustrating.

instead of just another pipeline for delivering the same old stuff? Who is going to speak for that most important collective good, our children's education?

Who is? Doesn't it have to be those involved, including the kids, their parents, their teachers and administrators?

Following is a summary of points discussed in the parallel Japanese Online Conference.

9th February to 11th February
On the question of privacy, Japan cannot be considered an 'industrialised nation', but is probably at the stage prior to that. Japan should be a member of the club of 'industrialised nations', in this respect. In other words, the question of monitoring (intercepting) communications should be clarified from a legal standpoint, and then introduced, so that Japan can be considered an 'industrialised nation' in this respect.

It is important here that the courts be made to function in a checking capacity. Further, any required restrictions with regard to confidentiality of communications, should be set down in the form of legal documentation, in order to enable judicial review after the fact.