roundtable: At the Sticking Place

roundtable: At the Sticking Place

At the Sticking Place

Vigdor Schreibman - FINS (fins@access.digex.net)
Fri, 10 Feb 1995 12:31:49 -0500 (EST) 

Date: Fri, 10 Feb 1995 12:31:49 -0500 (EST)
From: Vigdor Schreibman - FINS <fins@access.digex.net>
To: Vigdor Schreibman - FINS <fins@access.digex.net>
Subject: At the Sticking Place
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950210122910.415E-100000@access2.digex.net>


----------------Original Message Posted in Multiple Lists----------------- 
------------------------Republication Authorized-------------------------- 
  
FINS: Communicating the Emerging Philosophy of The Information Age       
FEDERAL INFORMATION NEWS SYNDICATE                    
Vol III, Issue No. 3 (118 lines)                          February 13, 1995
    
     
                  READ THIS ISSUE OF FINS TO CONSIDER:      
                                                             
                *   Telecommunications & Public Information Restructuring
                                          
                *   Breakdown in the "Public Interest" Community
    
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CLOSING THE "VALUES-GAP": 
At the Sticking Place
By Vigdor Schreibman 

     The telecommunications industry has a strong motivation to overcome the
ineffectiveness of its present legal structure.  That scheme was established
long prior to Al Gore's vision for the "information superhighways" that could
lead to increases in U.S. productivity growth, Gore has cited, of 40 percent
over the next decade, yielding huge profits.  Political leaders of both major
parties also see the same vision, as pointing to a way to relieve the
staggering public debt forecast to reach $6.7 trillion dollars within 10
years, or 58.1 percent of GDP, the highest level in U.S. history, disclosed
in a preliminary report by the Congressional Budget Office Jan 5, 1995.

     Speaker Newt Gingrich was first out with his vision of a "Magna Carta
of the Knowledge Age," released last December [Fins-PaN-18].  The 104th
Congress moved into action in reforming telecommunications law, with a
variety of informal and official meetings, and a showcase hearing for
Republican leaders on the subject held Jan 9, 1995, by the Senate Committee
on Commerce, Science and Transportation (Sen. Larry Pressler, R-SD, chairman)
[Fins-SR3-02].  This was followed by a gala closed door conference of
telecommunications industry leaders Jan 11, 1995, sponsored by Speaker
Gingrich [Fins-NC3-02].  Then on Feb 1, 1995, Chairman Pressler's "discussion
draft" of telecommunications reform legislation was released at a press
conference [Fins-SR3-08].  It includes provisions that would excuse past
violations of law by Rupert Murdoch, under which he acquired his American TV
media empire, now under investigation by the FCC.  The reformers, it appears,
are all working to promote a new era of Robber Barons for the Information
Age.


     Meanwhile, responsible "public interest" leadership groups are without
a plan for reforming telecommunications law, Fred W. Weingarten Executive
Director of Computing Research Association writes in the Feb 1995 issue of
Communications. Indeed, Americans remain in the same state of "technological
somnambulism--sleep-walking our way through the process of changing basic
patterns of social and political relationships," as Langdon Winner described
the existing situation in the Chronicle of Higher Education Aug 1993, and as
Patricia Glass Schuman, then President of the American Library Association
confirmed in an earlier phone interview Apr 1993 [Fins-NC-7].

     Much the same situation plagues the future of public information.  The
Clinton administration has been pressing for radical restructuring of the
Government Printing Office, the Superintendent of Documents, and Depository
Library program [Fins-PI-03,04], and Congress itself, protector of public
information systems since the first days of the republic [Fins-NC2-17], is
now moving toward abolishing the Joint Committee on Printing, and the related
support agencies [Fins-SR2-45; Fins-SR3-01].  Meanwhile, "public interest"
groups are without an alternative plan that has the support of the general
public.  The American Library Association did pass a pair of resolutions at
its Mid-Winter Meeting in Philadelphia last week, expressing concern for the
"haste of congressional initiatives dealing with the revision of Federal
information policy," and urging Congress "to continue the role of the GPO in
assuring the dissemination of government information to the public..."

     The National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (chaired
by Mrs. Jeanne Simon), was established to advise the President, Congress, and
State and local governments on implementation of national policy with regard
to "library and information systems adequate to meet the needs of the people
..."  But NCLIS, has been virtually mute with regard to all such matters. The
"public interest" community is a deeply caring and committed group.  However,
we are witness to the breakdown of the viability of the "public interest"
community in the United States in a transformation of great public moment.  

     It must be underscored that recognizing and overcoming this problem is
not a responsibility of the "public interest" community alone.  Everyone is
affected, everyone is responsible.  Indeed, we are at the sticking point,
paralyzed by ideological conflict that "We the People" and all our important
leadership groups are either unwilling or unable to overcome.  

     The economy of the United States is obscenely inequitable.  Government
data shows that the top one percent of American families have "more wealth
than the bottom 90 percent of the country" [Phillips, 1994].  Even as
Republican lawmakers are abolishing key cultural institutions with 
comparatively small budgets on economic grounds, a new analysis by the Joint
Committee on taxation has put the cost of promised tax cuts for the super
rich at $704.4 billion over the next decade.  Meanwhile, American families,
key social systems, and urban areas are disintegrating from neglect. And the
survival of the biosphere of Planet Earth is increasingly threatened. 

     As reported elsewhere the instruments of governance have fallen under
the control of "conservative" political forces that are promoting the worst
excesses of the market system and Capitalist extremism [Fins-PaN-20].  Yet
we lack shared insight that can overcome the existing situation and foster
a desirable future for the whole people, despite the tools available to
support collective inquiry required to gain that knowledge [Fins-SD-01,02].

     The history of the United States clearly reveals that time after time
whatever we have found the public will to achieve, we have done so, no matter
how difficult. It seems the people and our leaders have given up, stuck in
a frenzy of opportunism, failing to adapt our ways to a new order of reality.
Now time has run out, as the old saying goes, we must either "do or die."

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