roundtable: G-7 Ministerial conference on the global information society

roundtable: G-7 Ministerial conference on the global information society

G-7 Ministerial conference on the global information society

Vigdor Schreibman - FINS (fins@access.digex.net)
Tue, 21 Feb 1995 12:17:51 -0500 (EST) 

Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 12:17:51 -0500 (EST)
From: Vigdor Schreibman - FINS <fins@access.digex.net>
To: Vigdor Schreibman - FINS <fins@access.digex.net>
Subject: G-7 Ministerial conference on the global information society
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950221121303.10485E@access2.digex.net>


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FINS SPECIAL REPORT                                       February 21, 1995
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G-7 MINISTERIAL CONFERENCE ON THE GLOBAL INFORMATION SOCIETY
Making Way for the New by Destroying the Old Civilization

Washington, DC--The European Union, chaired by President Jacques Santer will
host the G-7 Information Society Conference Feb 25-26, 1995, at Brussels,
Belgium. The U.S. Delegation will be led by Secretary of Commerce Ronald H.
Brown.  Vice President Gore will deliver the keynote address at a luncheon
Feb 25th.  The Clinton Administration has stated that it wants to achieve
support from the G-7 on five basic principles for building the GII: 
encouraging private investment; promoting competition; creating a flexible
regulatory environment; providing open access to networks and services for
providers and users; and ensuring universal service.  The Administration gave
a detailed description of these principles in a paper released Feb 16, "The
Global Information Infrastructure: Agenda for Cooperation" [Fins-II2-03].

	However, on Feb 17, 1995, a coalition of leading human rights and civil
liberties groups petitioned Vice President Al Gore "to carry the banner of
free speech to Brussels" where the G-7 will meet next week to discuss the
future of the global information infrastructure (GII).  The coalition alleges
in a news release issued by Ann Beeson <beesona@hrw.org>, a fellow at Human
Rights Watch, and Marc Rotenberg <rotenberg@epic.org>, Executive Director of
the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), that the U.S. agenda for
the GII is incomplete because "it fails to include core free expression
principles" [Fins-II2-04].  They recommend that the Clinton Administration:
	*  protect against censorship and promote diverse ideas and 
		viewpoints on the GII.
	*  support broad access to the GII by people of all nations.
	*  promote strong information privacy rights on the GII.

     In addition to Human Rights Watch and EPIC, the petition was signed by
American Civil Liberties Union, American Library Association, Article 19,
Center for Democracy and Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation, People
for the American Way, and Privacy International.

	The Europeans have organized the G-7 conference around 3 themes:
	Theme 1: Regulatory Framework and Competition Policy;
	Theme 2: Development of the Information Infrastructure and the
          Provision of Access to It and Applications; and
	Theme 3: Social, Societal and Cultural Aspects

	On Saturday Morning, Feb 25th - some 40 to 50 private sector
representatives from the G-7 and EU will discuss issues regarding the
Information Society.  Ministers will be present, and business leaders will
discuss the same themes and issues, which will be addressed by the ministers
beginning in the afternoon session.  No comparable session of the conference
will include representatives of the social, cultural, or environmental
sectors that have a direct interest in the radically new global civilization-
-called the Information Society--being planned without public participation.

	Moreover, in the United States, members of the National Information
Infrastructure Advisory Council, have a lopsided membership of top CEOs from
American industry.  The NIIAC, together with private groups such as the
Computer Systems Policy Project, an affiliation of chief executive officers
of the 13 largest American computer companies, are advocating a strictly
business perspective on development of the Global Information Infrastructure,
together with a tough negotiating posture.  For example, recommendations of
the NIIAC provided to Secretary Brown Dec 6, 1994, concerning the issues to
be addressed at the G-7 Conference, staked out this position:
     While agreement on fundamental objectives and approaches to
     developing the GII will depend on multilateral initiatives, such
     as the G-7 Conference, there will remain a need to utilize
     bilateral and, in appropriate circumstances, unilateral measures
     to achieve specific objectives. 

	The "Perspectives on the Global Information Infrastructure," offered Feb
13, 1995, by business leaders of the CSPP, utterly disregards the primary
leadership role actually played by the research and education community in
development of the information infrastructure.  Moreover, they now call for
"Putting the Private Sector in the Driver's Seat." CSPPs perspective says
"The role of governments around the world is to nurture the GII by
establishing policies that support and encourage private sector initiatives. 
Governments must also ensure that private sector views are fully represented
in any international dialogue about the GII."

	The views of the not-for-profit or "third sector" organizations that
represent the interests of society and environmentalist concerns have been
basically locked out of the perspective on the GII by both the NIIAC and the
CSPP.  Theme 3 of the G-7 conference will focus on "Social, Societal and
Cultural Aspects" but only within the perspective of those narrow business
interests. This is the traditional rigged and lopsided perspective of the
marketplace mentality that disregards public goods [Lindblom, 1977;
Fins-SR3-09].  As Andrew Schmookler has observed: "the entire network of
connections that are the flesh of the social system are regarded as
"external" to the market.  The market listens to the wants of people as
individuals but is deaf to their needs as an interdependent community."1

     1.	Andrew Schmookler, The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of
     Power in Social Evolution (Houghton Mifflin, 1986): pp. 308-319.      
  
	The "marketplace" does not protect the environment, or safeguard the
public's life and well being; no "marketplace" sets a price for an extra year
of life or a month's supply of breathable air.  The "marketplace" does not
protect Americans against the sociopolitical context of chronic disease such
as unhealthy lifestyles, unsafe automobiles, toxic chemical substances, or
the chronic conditions of unemployment, underclass and urban disintegration. 
Yet, these are the very risk factors responsible for a large majority of all
preventable deaths in the United States.  Nor can the "marketplace" correct
distortions in the structure of political power, or sustain mature moral
relations between the weak and powerful, among those separated by race,
religion, ethnic origin, gender and generation.  It cannot reach above the
narrow focus of individual transactions to define the needs of the community,
or those of society and civilization as a whole, nor does it serve the common
good and secure fulfillment of the social contract among all Americans, which
is our inalienable birthright.  In short, the "marketplace" certainly will
not function to encourage and facilitate those essential social relations and
valued cultural patterns that go the core of communications values and
goals, which should govern building a new civilization in cyberspace.   

     The crucial issue derived from these conditions concerns the need
     for an information and telecommunications infrastructure that will
     support "sustainable development" embracing the social needs of the
     society and our environment in forms that are not subject to profit
     pressures, which undermine the desired outcomes.

	Nevertheless, one networker, Dale R. Worley <worley@ariadne.com>, who
operates the Ariadne Internet Services, "Helping businesses profit from using
the Internet," has observed that instead of responding to these needs, when
a new civilization is created "the creative process necessarily leaves most
of the existing civilization behind." In a message transmitted over the Net,
Feb 14 on the subject "Stakeholders in the telecom wars," Worley writes:
 
     Commonly, and especially in the American tradition, new
     civilizations are created by having a non-representative segment
     of the population remove itself to a new and "unoccupied" area
     (physical, social, or economic), and there build the new
     civilization....  After the new system is created, it takes over
     and destroys the old civilization, by one means or another. 

     The "colonization" of North America and the resulting effects on
     the Native Americans is about the only well-recorded episode of
     interaction between the two civilizations, but it is probably
     typical:  Agricultural peoples can field more warriors than non-
     agricultural peoples.  Similarly, low-skilled manufacturing workers
     have little to gain by a transition to an information-intensive
     economy, and are in serious danger of losing their union wages. 
 
	The destructive impact of the existing sitiuation is not speculation. 
At the Appropriation Subcommittee hearing Jan 19, Rep. Edward J. Markey
(D-MA), former chairman of the House Telecommunications Subcomm told members
that the debate unfolding is "about the culture of the United States."  He
stated that the decision was made by legislation approving NAFTA and GATT,
to forego low paying industrial jobs in favor of developing a high skilled
work force, and thus, the nation "must give children the skills to get high
end jobs." However, the economy is now being subjected to cannibalization by
multinational corporations because the training needed for that purpose is
not being carried out.  Moreover, Speaker Newt Gingrich has vowed to abolish
high-quality public information system such as the public broadcasting system
and the Government Printing Office.  This is part of a "conservative" war now
being waged against other key American cultural institutions [Fins-PaN-20].

	It is a shocking spectacle to witness the world's powerful Ministers
creating a new global civilization, to maximize the narrow self-interests of
private industry, by taking a free ride on the social and environmental
interests within which the new civilization must be established.  This will
doom the vision of a life sustaining Earth. Stakeholders in the telecom wars
who accept their social responsibility, have their work cut out for them. 
To avoid destruction, those public interests and a viable strategy to sustain
them must be explicitly articulated with meaningful public participation. 
Political support can then be organized throughout the global community.

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