Feb 20 - Feb 22, 1998

The question of 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. Taking care of the commons is, by definition, NOT the role of business -- 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 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 tomorrow. Somehow, leadership must emerge from the private sector to at least begin acknowledging this problem. 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.

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 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 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 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?

In an effort to broaden the discussion of how the future development of the Net can affect society, I feel it will be helpful to consider what the real problems and needs of various institutions and sectors of society are that the Internet of the Future can help to solve.

For example of a problem in K-12 education is that an intermediate or high school teacher may have 5 different class preparations to do daily, making it difficult to do any one preparation well. Also, students often are asked to sit quietly and do their work in groups of 30+ facilitating very little interaction for each individual student and thus leading to discipline problems. How can the Internet of the future help teachers to share their lessons so they can build on the work each other is doing? And how can it help students to be more actively involved in the learning process? Would a student having internet access at least 2 hours a day while in public school make school a more useful and interesting place?

What are the other problems of K-12 schools that having the Net available for kids in classrooms at least 2 hours a day can help to solve? This is one of the topics that would seem to need broad discussion before the dream of net access for kids in all schools will ever become reality. Somehow the vision needs to be understood to help the practical implementation to happen.

Similarly, how could the Internet of the Future help solve the problems of the university library of the future? A good university library has millions of books. How can the Net help to search out the books relevant to an user's subject of study? J.C.R. Licklider, one of the pioneers whose vision led to the development of timesharing and then the ARPANET, asked whether the networking of computers couldn't even help in the phrasing of important questions or problems.

In considering the problems that newspapers and readers face with regard to how the news is gathered today, how could the Internet of the Future help to expand the group for reporters who will give the details of a breaking news story? And how can the perspective of viewing the story be broadened by making it possible for citizen or netizen reporters to participate in the account of the event?

Another important area for discussion would be the Net of the Future. A problem of the current moment seems to be that there is not adequate bandwidth for all to have access, so those creating the next protocols for the future are proposing prioritizing packet use so those who pay more have faster and more privileged access. Others feel that all should have access to equally treated packets, as tcp/ip functions today, but that bandwidth should be extended and all those who don't today have access should be able to have free or very low cost access so they can participate in email, Usenet, www and other functions of the Net. Can there be more Net access made available so all can have access if they choose at least 2 hours a day, or even better to a continuous Net connection?

This is just a beginning effort to identify the problems of different social institutions of our time and see how the Net in an ever expanding form can help make possible a way to solve these problems. I welcome suggestions of the institutions and areas of society which should be examined, or of the problems in some area that need solution, as well as details or examples of how the Net of the Future might be helpful in solving such problems.

In the early 1960's there was a conference at MIT that examined the future of the computer. Computer pioneers explored the problems of the university, of libraries, of management, and of the computer itself, etc. and proposed what kinds of changes the computer could help make possible. Also they noted that it was important that decisions regarding the computer of the future *not* be made by small groups of government officials detached from the larger population of citizens. Instead they proposed that it was important to have lots of people discussing the issues that government officials would act on, so those decisions would more likely be decisions that would benefit, *not* harm the majority of the population. (See 'Management and the Computer of the Future', ed. Martin Greenberger, The MIT Press, 1962)

I feel we are at a similar point in the determination of the future of the Net, as computer pioneers were in the early 1960's when they held this conference at MIT. A vision, both broad and particular, for the future development of the Net needs to be articulated and embraced. And it is important that lots of people, both online and off, be involved in discussing, determining and working to make this vision a reality. From this vision we need to identify what is the future form of online activity that we determine it is important to work for. This is a call for those who are interested in helping to craft this vision, to take up these issues, and to figure out how to share the work to make this discussion possible.

We have been discussing some interesting points about the relative roles, or different functions, of the private sector vs. government.

I just returned from Taiwan where I spoke to the Internet Commerce Expo. We had discussions about the changing roles of government in the networked society. Surprisingly, they have some interesting new ideas about how the Internet is going to change the roles and functions of government, including international relations and trade; and the private sector -- defined both as private businesses, and private sector social, developmental, intermediating structures.

We have governments privatizing their functions (witness the announcement to privatize China Telecom); and we have multinational corporations acting like governments in some cases -ie. setting international standards, and writing new rules for the law of the Internet.

How will the Internet impact these basic institutions?

We have the EU's Bangemann-Brittan proposing a global charter of rules for the cyber marketplace - government led, but with consultation with the private sector. We have Ira Magaziner of the White House proposing that governments get out of the business of setting domain names, and turn it over to private, non-profit institutions. And then we have Daniel Salcedo's PEOPLINK going ahead to empower poor craftsmen from Central America and Africa to sell their work on the global market for profit!

So who is really building the networked society for the 21st century?

Your comments are welcome.

Responding to post by Jim A. Johnson
I just returned from Taiwan where I spoke to the Internet Commerce Expo. We had discussions about the changing roles of government in the networked society. Surprisingly, they have some interesting new ideas about how the Internet is going to change the roles and functions of government, including international relations and trade; and the private sector -- defined both as private businesses, and private sector social, developmental, intermediating structures.

I am reminded of Jurgen Habermas's relevant book 'The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere'

He describes how a public sphere grew up in the process of the change from hereditary government to representative government. That the public sphere involved people discussing the important issues of the day, debating them and determining in this way what their interests were.

That this helped to create a public sphere of people who developed 'intelligent criticism of publicly discussed issues'.

Into this situation there was an effort by commercial entities to replace the vibrant critical discussion with their corruption of the process. They would create events where they would present ideas representing their private interests and try to present these as the public interest.

Habermas's book shows that commercial entities presented their activities as serving the public, but that this was only a disguise to conceal the real intentions.

So it is helpful in the current climate to try to determine whether efforts of government or commercial entities are veiled efforts to hide their private interests or if there is a vibrant and functioning new form of online public sphere developing which allows those who aren't the powerful interests to debate the issues they feel important and to influence what will happen concerning these issues.

I will post a draft paper I am working on about this at a URL where I have several history of the Net papers. The URL is http://www.umcc.umich.edu/~ronda/habermas

I welcome comments on the paper and the issues.

As the token cryptoanarchist around here, I've been lurking way too long, mostly because I'm working on this financial cryptography conference we're doing in Anguilla next week. However, A lot of good stuff has gone by on all of these groups, and I think it's time I put my oar in and earn my keep a bit before I enter the maelstrom of next week's FC98 conference, and lose my chance to say anything here until it's all over.

The first topic I'd like to talk about is something which is more general than my ostensible commercial focus in these discussions, and, after I've said my piece here, I'll go back to the commerce list and pay more attention to that end of things. I have a little more to say there on what you can do with the technology of money on public networks, though I'll drop a few hints here to get people thinking about them.

My observation about networks in general is a rather obvious one when you think about it: our social structures map to our communication structures. As intuitive as it is to understand, this observation provides great insight into where the technology of computer assisted communication will take us in the years ahead.

Because of Moore's Law and its effect of collapsing the price of semiconductors by half every 18 months, our telecommunication architectures have changed from hierarchical networks, where it's cheaper to add lines than it is to add expensive switching nodes, to geodesic networks, where it is ever-exponentially cheaper to add microprocessor switches instead of now relatively more expensive transmission lines.

This isn't new. In fact, it's outlined in Peter Huber's landmark 'The Geodesic Network', written in 1986 as a report for Judge Harold Greene as part of the Modified Final Judgement which broke up American Telephone and Telegraph, and with it the US telephone monopoly. I believe the original version is still available from the US Government Printing Office, and I know that you can order a revised edition from Peter Huber's law firm in Washington. Huber himself is now a famous technology analyst from the Manhattan Institute and a Forbes columnist, among other things.

In 'The Geodesic Network', Huber observed that because the network was becoming more and more geodesic, competition in telecommunications was becoming much easier. That's because switching, a scarce thing which had heretofore caused economies of scale and resultant 'natural' monopoly, was becoming cheaper and cheaper to build, and thus causing *dis*economies of scale in the telephone markets.

One can almost hear Huber doing a little heavy lifting from the Marines in report's conclusion, which was, essentially, 'Deregulate 'em all, and let God sort 'em out.' It's nice to see that we're finally getting to see deregulation of the 'last mile' of the US telephone network 10 years after Huber's recommendation.

As it is, it took *me* almost 10 years to realize something else about geodesic networks. It's something which required me getting back on the internet 4 years ago, after not being there since grad school, and discovering that financial cryptography -- that is, the cryptographic protocols for internet payment -- was much more important than the project management software I had wanted to sell on the net at the time.

My realization was, if Moore's Law creates geodesic communications networks, and our social structures -- our institutions, our businesses, our governments -- all map to the way we communicate in large groups, then we are in the process of creating a geodesic society. A society in which communication between any two residents of that society, people, economic entities, pieces of software, whatever, is geodesic: literally, the straightest line across a sphere, rather than hierarchical, through a chain of command, for instance.

This seems like a very simple truth these days. A 'motherhood', as people in American business like to say. But, once you start thinking about the world in the terms of geodesic networks versus hierarchical ones, the world changes. A Buckminster Fuller version of satori, if you will, though I'm sure Bucky didn't think of human society in geodesic terms, at least from what I've read of his work. His 'World Game', for instance, is primarily about the hierarchical centralization and redistribution of resources in an industrial fashion. But, as it was, Bucky Fuller had discovered a geometric archtype which was deeper than even his capacious understanding of its implications had gotten him before.

So in light of this observation, for fun, let's look at human history in a few paragraphs. :-).

Humans first lived in small groups on the African savanna. An artifact of this life is the fact that most people can't have serious emotional relationships with more than about 12 people, depending on how you define serious. :-). Think of it as the carrying capacity of the human 'switch', and things get interesting. These small groups communicated geodesically. When you wanted to talk to someone, you went up and talked to them. Then we developed agriculture and its resulting food surpluses, people tended to congregate at the crossroads of trade routes, and that's where the first cities began. Civilization means, literally, 'life in cities', remember? Once we had large groups of people in a single place, we had lots of information to pass around, but we also had expensive humans 'switching' that information who were only able to trust about 12 people at any time. So, we had to develop hierarchical 'networks', social organizations in other words, to move that information around. Notice we finesse the whole trust problem by using the entire hierarchy as one entity in everyone's trusted-person list. That's why people die for king and country, for instance, instead of just their family hunter-gatherer clan.

So, we can now see the ancient city-state as a hierarchy of power, economics, whatever. We can also see ancient empires as a hierarchies of city states, and so on. Notice that the size of any given hierarchy in geographic terms is determined by the *speed* of communications it posesses. Athenian triremes were very secure ways to move goods and information in a relatively lawless Agean. Roman roads and galleys didn't just haul goods quickly, they moved information as well. Staged Mongol riders could carry messages across their own short-lived empire from a capital near China to the gates of Warsaw in as little as 14 days. Napoleon invented his 10-mile-an-hour stagecoach and highway system for exactly the same reason, and could almost legitimately call himself an emperor for the feat alone.

That brings us to the modern nation state, which, I claim, is entirely the result of industrial communications technology. That is, you have increasingly faster communications, from sailing ships to trains to telegraphy and finally telephony, but you still have humans switching information. That gives you larger and larger communication, and thus social, hierarchies. Up until the automation of telephone switching -- paradoxically brought about a demand for universal service in exchange for that ultimate industrial hierarchy, the US telephone monopoly -- things just kept getting bigger and bigger. One could even see the increasing size of government in this century as an 'antihierarchy' funded by the forcible confiscation or political extortion of economic rents from the large industrial hierarchies where industrial society's money was being made in the first place.

For a tasty little digression, Marxism then can be seen as simple anti-industrialism, and an intriguing validation of Bertrand Russell's comments about the similarity of Marxism and the feudal aristocracy it hated so much. Hegel can't come to Marx's rescue here at all, because, for all it's anarchistic pretensions, Marxism can now be seen as merely industrialism's hierarchical antithesis, and not something 'beyond capitalism'. Besides, trading has been around since the savana itself. It's hard to imagine something antithetical to trade -- and have the result be human, anyway. :-).

Okay. Now let's look at the future, shall we? Oddly enough, the 'future' starts with the grant of telephone monopoly to AT&T in the 1920's in exchange for universal telephone service. When AT&T figured out that a majority of people would have to be telephone operators for that to happen, it started to automate switching, from electricomechanical, to electronic (the transistor was invented at Ball Labs, remember), to, finally, semiconducting microprocessors. Which, Huber noted, brought us Moore's Law, and, finally, that mother of all geodesic networks, the internet.

So, seen this way, using the hierarchy-to-geodesy synthesis (speaking of Hegel :-)), a lot of things jump out right at us. Let's look at financial operations, for example.

One can see, for instance, that the thing we call disintermediation in the capital markets is in fact a process leading to something I call *micro*intermediation, where large human decision hierarchies, like the New York Stock Exchange, or money center banks, are being outcompeted by large integrated proprietary computer networks, like the NASDAQ interbrokerage network, or Fidelity Investments here in Boston. Yet, these financial versions of big dumb bulletin boards, which still need humans to operate them on behalf of the customer, will themselves be replaced someday by smaller, more specialized and automated entities operating in increasingly smaller market niches, and, we aren't just talking about financial 'shovelware', with database-driven web forms, either.

Someday, for instance, a couple of portfolio managers from Fidelity could strike out on their own peculiar investment specialty, and set up a web server to handle their investor relations, but in a way that financial operations people thought was obsolete decades ago. Using financial cryptgraphy like David Chaum's blind signature protocol, our portfolio managers could just issue digital *bearer* certificates, right over the net to their customers, representing shares in the portfolio they manage, rather than keep track of all a given client's transactions in a database for posterity. Even more fun, using the digital bearer *cash* they get from the sale of those certificates, they could turn right around and instantly buy debt, equity, or any derivative thereof, in digital bearer form, of course, without waiting for any transactions to settle through a clearinghouse of any kind. Why? Because knowing that you've digitally signed a unique blop of bits and honoring the promises those various outstanding blops represent is a whole lot easier, faster, and, of course, cheaper than keeping track of every transaction you make for seven years, or whatever your friendly nation state says you have to do so they can send somebody to jail if that person lies to you. And, of course, digital bearer settlement is *much* faster than waiting for all those book-entries to percolate through various clearinghouses, banks, brokerages, and other financial intermediaries in order for a trade to clear and settle.

Financial cryptography is a direct consequence of Moore's Law. You can't do it without computers, and, more important, lots of cheap computers on a network. But, you can do a lot of very neat things with it, as we've seen above. In fact, the protocols of financial cryptography will be the glue which holds a geodesic economy, if you will, together. And, of course, as Deke Slayton put it, 'No bucks, no Buck Rogers.' No geodesic economy, no geodesic society.

I joke about VISA being replaced someday by an innumerable swarm of very small underwriting 'bots' whose job it is to form an ad hoc syndicate which buys the personal digital bearer bond issue you floated for today's lunch. In a geodesic market, the one-to-many relationships of hierarchical book-entry-settled industrial finance, like checks and credit cards, becomes to the many-to-one relationship of the geodesic digital-bearer-settled cash and the personal bond syndicate.

But, what, you ask, do I do when someone defrauds me? The neat thing about using financial cryptography on public networks is that you can use the much cheaper early-industrial trust models that went away because you couldn't shove a paper bearer bond down a telegraph wire. In short, reputation becomes everything. Like J. Pierpont Morgan said 90 years ago, '...Character. I wouldn't buy anything from a man with no character if he offered me all the bonds in Christendom.' In a geodesic market, if someone commits fraud, everyone knows it. Instantly. And, something much worse than incarceration happens to that person. That person's reputation 'capital' disappears. They cease to exist financially. Financial cryptographers jokingly call it reputation capital punishment. :-). The miscreant has to start all over with a new digital signature, and have to pay through the nose until that signature's reputation's established. A very long and expensive process, as anyone who's gone bankrupt will testify to.

So, you don't need biometric identity to stop non-repudiation. Translated, that means that since you're moving secure digital bearer certificates over an insecure private network like the internet, and not moving insecure debits and credits over a secure private network like the SWIFT system, you don't need audit trails to send someone to jail if they make the wrong book entry.

Instead, you trust the issuer of a given piece of digital bearer cash, say, and not the person who gave it to you, just like you trust the issuer of a given currency today. Biometric identity is orthogonal to reputation in, um, 'cypherspace'. And, of course, a financial intermediary like the above issuer of digital bearer cash is not about to destroy its reputation for the sake of a very small transaction like the one you're doing, any more than the Fed would demand 6 one dollar bills in exchange for one five dollar bill just to make an extra buck. Well, not since they started listening to Friedman, anyway. :-)

Microintermediation means what it says. Financial intermediaries never go away. You can't have markets, much less efficient ones, without financial intermediaries buying things low and selling them high. Renting their reputations to ensure transaction liquidity, in other words. This is at the essense of Von Mises' 'Calculation Argument' against planned economies, and the defunct economy of the ex-Soviet Union is mute testament to that particular economic truth.

Moore's Law, I like to say, operates like a surfactant of information, breaking great globs of concentrated information fractally into smaller and smaller bits, like so much grease in soapy dishwater. Capital, for the most part, can now be converted into information and instantantly bought or sold, or, more to the point, instantly settled and cleared in digital bearer form, in increasingly smaller and smaller bits, by smaller and smaller and increasingly more automated financial intermediaries. Microintermediated, in other words.

What we get is a world where anything which can be digitized and sent down a wire will be auctioned off in real-time in cash-settled markets. Stuff like capital we've seen, but lots of other things, which are not immediately intuitive. Machine instructions -- teleoperated or not. Software of all kinds including entertainment and art. Bandwidth; I talk about a router saving enough micromoney out of switching income to buy a copy of itself.

Maybe even adjudication and physical force, someday. After all, who says we have to buy violence from the local force monopolies we now call nation states, especially if we can get it cheaper and better -- and possibly in smaller amounts -- in a competitive auction market? Curioser and curioser, as Alice used to say...

I mean, the nation-state's just another hierarchical artifact of industrial communication technology, right? Besides, If everyone's paying for things in cash and no book entry taxes can be collected because there aren't any book entries, then, as someone said on a Harvard Law School list a few years ago, 'What happens when taxes become a tip'? Of course, there are various cypherpunks out there who say things like 'Write softare, not laws.', which should make those folks on Mass Ave in Cambridge more than a little nervous themselves.

So, welcome to the geodesic future. Not hoping to attract the wrath of the famous curse, isn't it an, um, interesting place?

Hello My name is Bruno Lanvin, and this is my first message to the list, i.e. my first contribution to this virtual conference. I am responsible for the United Nations' electronic commerce programme, known as 'Trade Point Programme'. The question of whether the US proposal is or is not of interest to developing countries is of course at the core of our current work (http://www.unicc.org/untpdc), here at the UN. However, one needs to consider the broader picture as well. There are currently four proposals for a 'global framework for electronic commerce'. It is likely that these four proposals will rapidly converge towards a common OECD proposal (US, EU, Japan and OECD) (set , on time for the Ministerial Meeting of Ottawa. The next logical step will be a transposition of these OECD guidelines to a WTO context.

I strongly believe that we have a window of opportunity to contribute to the emergence of a fifth proposal (October 98), which will include the position and specific concerns and interests of non-OECD countries, i.e. mainly developing countries If we do it quickly, the Fifth Element will constitute a positive, dynamic and growth-oriented set of proposals To do this, three major conditions need to be met:

1 Developing countries need to be sensitized to the potential of e-commerce for the growth of their economies and societies; this will not be done through talk-talk-talk (i.e. their governments, enterprises, but by allowing them to have a hands-on approach to e-commerce; hence the importance of initiatives such as Leyland in Africa;, or the Global Trade Point Network worldwide;

2 The dynamics of OECD discussions and debates over e-commerce needs to become more visible; ,more transparent and more open; its relationship with the WTO process will need to be considered (to developing countries in particular); (ITA + basic telecom services + financial services on one hand, trade facilitation on the other hand)

We have enjoyed exploring many different ideas these past weeks concerning the nature of the global information infrastructure, the networked society, global electronic commerce, the various roles of present institutions in the future cyber world, the kinds of leadership needed to carry us into the future, and how we should educate and prepare the next generation for their brave new world.

I would like to challenge all of you, now, to frame these ideas in the form of some friendly advice that you would give to interested citizens in Japan.

As you know, one of the reasons that Nikkei has organized this global net conference is to point toward a launchpad event on March 10, the Global Information Summit. This Summit is designed to increase awareness among Japan's leaders to what is happening around the world in the information revolution. This event is envisioned as the beginning of a process of thought leadership and debate to prepare the nation for the future.

Frame your comments in terms of what you would advise our friends in Japan:
What new ideas need to be circulated to help get Japan ready for the networked world?

Based on what you know about Japan: their business structures, their political institutions, their education system, their cultural patterns, how would you recommend they change?

What can they draw upon from the past and present to use in building the future information society?

What is there about Japan now that enables them to be leaders in the information age?

What new things and new ideas do they need to grasp to move forward?

What specific changes need to happen, and in what frameworks? The schools? the businesses? the political institutions? the legal system?

I look forward to advice. Thank you.

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

12th to 15th February
The question of the handling of different types of human rights problems, such as privacy and direct conflict of rights between individuals, through the networks was raised and discussed.
There was a lively debate on the subject.
- Expression and speech on the networks should be more rigorously controlled.
- How can the publication of false statements be prevented (and is there a need to)?
- How can highly illegal matters be controlled? How is (content) to be monitored and controlled?
Also, the top ten Internet warnings of the American AIM were introduced.

1) FTC random inspections
2) Internet tax
3) FCC tariff system
4) Revival of the communications decency act
5) Prohibition of using the Internet to gather data
6) Prohibition of the use of e-mail lists and data
7) Prohibition of commercial e-mail
8) Responsibilities of communications carriers
9) Web contents penalties
10) V chips in computers

Some Friendly Advice for Japan:

On my visit to Japan in 1995 one of the things that struck me was how commonly I was asked 'How do we best use the Net?' I said it was important to be active and contribute through making posts to newsgroups, or mailing lists, web pages and other additions to the Net. I find the Net boring if all I am doing is 'surfing' or passively consuming whether it is text or graphics or a combination. A common response was that of the person saying that she or he did not quite know how to represent themselves online. So my advice is that it is important to become less shy and become active online.

A new global culture is emerging that is different than the hyped and forced Westerization of the world. This global culture is different than an invasion of Mickey Mouse and McDonalds because it is being developed through the grassroots, from the bottom up rather than from the top down. The specialness of the Net comes from the fact that individuals have as much of a say as large corporations and larger organizations. The interaction of people at a grassroots level is what is developing this worldwide culture. People are being exposed to differences in a way which invites familiarity rather than discrimination. Rather than seeing 'the other' as an opposing force, they are presented in the actual communication of real people. This kind of connection helps to encourage understanding and sharing rather than fighting and hate.

To move towards the future and the development of this global culture, it is important that Japan recognize they have something unique to share with others. It is important that Japan become interested in joining with the world community rather than staying isolated both physically and virtually. Physical isolation has been breached, although the geographical distances and natural boundaries will never be fully removed. In the online world other than the language this isolation does not exist unless artificially preserved. Raise to the moment and understand that Japan has a valuable culture and wealth of knowledge to share with the rest of the world. Represent yourself and your contribution to the developing global culture and learn what you can from others. Do not be afraid to speak your mind because others will learn from that and thank you for that contribution. It is also important to strive to make access available to all within Japanese society so that all sectors are contributing to the world. If access to the Net is limited to those who can afford, then the Japanese contribution to the developing global culture will be limited. The Net is only as useful as the number of connections that exist. It is important to have the Net represent open boundless connection among people, and not about privilege and close mindedness.

Good luck and looking forward to the development of human society from the open connection of all sectors to each other. May the Net help democratize our world.

AAA: This GIS Online Conference is passing the mid-way, and Mr. Jim Johnson, our Net conference moderator just issued his guideline: [035] Your Advice to Japan, perhaps to collect concluding materials to be utilized in the March 10th (Real) Summit meeting.

Mr. Michael Hauben gave promptly his good advice in [037]Advice: Actively Share Japanese Culture and perspective with the World.

It could be a little bit too late to raise this kind of rather specific question/discussion, at this time frame, about a topic: 'Population problem reduction versus (social) Networking capability of computer net', described in Haubens' instructive and interesting book: 'Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet', I am afraid.

Though, I hope this comment would be of some use to the preparation of the possible other advice to Japan concerning the deployment of Network Society, a set of Networked Communities of Common Interest.

BBB: I am a reader of the Japanese print edition of the above Haubens' book, translated by INOUE,Hiroki & KOBAYASHI, Osamu, and published by Chuoh Kohron Sha, in September 1997. By the way, a book review article of the book was issued in last October on the 'NIKKEI' by Mr. SEKIGUCHI, Waichi, the organizer of this GIS On-line conference. To be frank with you, I could finish reading through the book, having been stimulated by learning the active participation of the Haubens (mother and son), the coauthors, in this GIS Online Conference.

CCC: Please allow me to quote below in my last paragraph XXX, the text of specifically relevant paragraph of Chapter 1 'THE NET AND NETIZENS: The Impact the Net has on People's Lives', taken from http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/. This is just for the benefit of other participants of this GIS Online conference.

I believe that Mr Michael Hauben's view about 'Population problem reduction versus (social) Networking capability of computer net' indicated in the below quoted paragraph contains something very unique and interesting.

DDD: (My comments in Japanese English)
I can agree to Mr. M. Hauben's optimistic/positive observation that Population growth need not mean limited resources any more -- rather that very growth of population now means an improvement of resources.----- Every new person can mean a new set of perspectives and specialties to add to the wealth of knowledge of the world.-----, if it is assumed that the 'population', 'people' and 'every person' Michael is talking about, mean mainly those information-'pro-sumer' being (or being given good opportunity to be raised to be) enough powerful/abundant in terms of computer-literacy of certain level, i.e. the 'information/computer-wise powerful' people, plus their 'colleague' in the same real (NOT-cybernetic/virtual) communities of 'not-for-profit' type and 'profit-pursuing' type.

I am not so sure whether the Netizen growth would catch up with the general population growth (or rather explosion) in this Globe/Earth eventually, even though I do recognize that the CURRENT netizen growth rate (differential) is amazing, promising and greater than the general population growth !

EEE: Perhaps, the List Administrator will indicate much appropriately in the next weekly reports of the parallel Japanese Online Conference, but a part of talk item in last week at its 'Network Society' portion : [gisj-net] (Moderator: Mr.SUGII) was devoted to the relationship/comparison/dilemma between 'Information-wise strong/powerful people' and unfortunate 'weak/vulnerable people' to be left in inferior computer-literacy status (in Japan and in the overall Globe).

I share also the view with the Haubens about the importance and synergetic/generative power of the combination of netizen population growth and universally accessible computer-net deployment. And the netizen population growth means the provision of many information-intensified work/pleasure opportunities of the both types: 'not-for-profit' type and 'profit-pursuing' type, in various geographical regions.

Still, the above good combination seems not (yet) good enough to solve smoothly the serious/deep problems of population growth pressure in general, I am afraid. The problems are of course such as the earth environment contamination prevailing, the resource shortage for comfortable life-maintenance, the life level gap of information-wise 'haves' and 'have-nots', in many developing countries/region and even some reasonably industry-wise developed countries.

Mr. Michael Hauben mentioned in his line as ----it reduces the problems of population growth. ----- . Perhaps he does mean just 'reduction' and NOT 'elimination' of population growth problem, thus the difference of his observation and mine might be rather small. But, in Japanese edition, the Japanese word: 'kokufuku' (coresponding to rather 'overcome' in English) is utilized in this aspect, and perhaps it might provide Japanese print edition readers with a bit stronger impression than what the author originally meant. Anyway --------.

FFF: Japan herself is currently suffering from the problems coming up (rather) from 'the quick growth of aged population portion in the already existing high population density status' internally, rather than the ordinary population growth pressure. But, due to the geographically internal natural resources (especially human food and livestock feed) limit situation, the fortune of Japan is closely linked to the global population growth pressure.

GGG: I have no doubt about the observation that the above combination of netizen population growth and universally accessible computer-net deployment is essential also to solve the above Japan's problems coming from 'the quick growth of aged population portion'. But to support the relatively aged information-wise 'have-nots' in the real (not-cybernetic/virtual) communities seems to me a left-open item. It requires additional Japanese-culture-(reservation/modification) based measures of slow (not quick) effect type, which would be not necessarily relevant to computer-net-based informatization and ('digital') information-networking.

(End of my comments)

EEE: Any critique and advice to/against the above comments, based upon relevant recent study/consideration results are very much appreciated. Best Regards.

(End of main text)

XXX: Attachment:
QUOTE from Chapter 1 THE NET AND NETIZENS: The Impact the Net has on People's Lives, by Michael Hauben, http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/ch106.x01

The virtual space created on noncommercial computer networks is accessible universally. The content on commercial networks, like Compuserve or America On-Line, is only accessible by those who pay to belong to that particular network. The space on noncommercial networks is accessible from the connections that exist, whereas social networks in the physical world generally are connected by limited gateways. So the capability of networking on computer nets overcomes limitations inherent in noncomputer social networks. This is important because it reduces the problems of population growth. Population growth need not mean limited resources any more -- rather that very growth of population now means an improvement of resources. Thus growth of population can be seen as a positive asset. This is a new way of looking at people in our society. Every new person can mean a new set of perspectives and specialties to add to the wealth of knowledge of the world. This new view of people could help improve the view of the future. The old model looks down on population growth and people as a strain on the environment rather than the increase of intellectual contribution these individuals can make. However, access to the Net needs to be universal for the Net to fully utilize the contribution each person can represent. As long as access is limited -- the Net and those on the Net, lose the full advantages the Net can offer. Lastly the people on the Net need to be active in order to bring about the best possible use of the Net.