roundtable: Global Grass Roots "Cyberspace Society" Launched
roundtable: Global Grass Roots "Cyberspace Society" Launched
Global Grass Roots "Cyberspace Society" Launched
Vigdor Schreibman - FINS (fins@access.digex.net)
Sun, 16 Apr 1995 23:02:27 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 23:02:27 -0400 (EDT)
From: Vigdor Schreibman - FINS <fins@access.digex.net>
To: Vigdor Schreibman - FINS <fins@access.digex.net>
Subject: Global Grass Roots "Cyberspace Society" Launched
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950416225941.25526N-100000@access4.digex.net>
FINS: Communicating the Emerging Philosophy of The Information Age
FEDERAL INFORMATION NEWS SYNDICATE
April 17, 1995
Global Grass Roots "Cyberspace Society" Launched
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
A global grass roots initiative has been launched to establish the
"Cyberspace Society" and capitalize on the unprecedented telecommunications
power of the more than 20 million people currently using the Internet. The
focus of the initiative is to foster new strong democratic institutions and
establish a credible counterforce to growing mega-corporate dominance over
the global civilization.
A key feature of the plan is to facilitate the design of a
coherent plan for the future by Networkers that can challenge the
self-interests of the telecommunications industry, and serve the general
welfare of the global people through a "Cyberspace Social Contract." This
would include: 1) a 3-level infrastructure (fostering sustainable
development through economic, social, and environmental balance), 2) a
bill of cyber-rights, and 3) a set of applications constituting global
challenges.
The multinational group spearheading the initiative includes Vigdor
Schreibman, editor and publisher of the Federal Information News Syndicate;
W. Curtiss Priest, Ph.D., director of the Center for Information, Technology,
and Society; and Richard K. Moore, writer, and chairman of the Cyber-Rights
Campaign of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. (Federal
Information News Syndicate; April 17, 1995)
-----------------Cyberspace Society Charter---------------------
------------------Republication Authorized----------------------
THE
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making the world safe for enlightened democracy
April 17, 1995
SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER:
A Call For Establishment of "The Cyberspace Society"
By Vigdor Schreibman, W. Curtiss Priest, and Richard K. Moore
The moving sociopolitical forces presently shaping the Information Age
includes industry groups such as computer, information, telecommunications,
broadcasting, and cable. They have colossal monopoly and oligopoly-based
resources of, perhaps, half a trillion dollars with which to plan for their
future and acquire the necessary political influence to implement such plans.
Similar coalitions of mega-corporate interests are behind the various efforts
to create super-national organizations based on treaty-status agreements such
as NAFTA, GATT, and Maastricht. These agreements seek to supersede national
sovereignty by un-elected commissions dominated by corporate representatives.
However we may criticize the governments of the various Western Democracies,
they at least include a modicum of popular representation, and should be
much-preferred to the corporate commissions that threaten to replace them.
In the US, the UK, Mexico, and in many other countries, governments are using
their positions of temporary power to commit their nations to agreements,
which surrender sovereignty to these commissions, and thereby limit the
ability of future governments to fulfill their democratic representational
mandates. For years, large corporations have been consolidating their
control over these governments and the electoral process and are now cashing
in their chips in an attempt to achieve global hegemony for corporate power,
to replace democracy, such as it is, with a new form of Feudalism.
Ideology is used as a tool to manipulate the political process. So
called "conservatives" in the US with a new style of political leadership
are now attempting to massively restructure American public life along
reactionary lines. Syndicated columnist Jonathan Yardly wrote in an article
in The Washington Post Dec. 26, 1994, that these leaders "would have us
believe ... that they are 'conservatives,' but in truth the ideology they
espouse has virtually nothing to do with conservativism as it is properly
understood and almost everything to do with avarice, jingoism, intolerance,
boosterism, moral relativism, religiosity and just plain meanness." New
insight to turn the new world order away from its present course toward more
enlightened purposes is now of greater urgency than ever.
For the most part, people get their reading of these events through the
corporate-dominated media. The larger pattern of events is intentionally
concealed by this media, whose owners tend to be the same corporate forces
engineering the changes. Internet provides a unique vehicle for 'going
around' the mass media and providing for ourselves an independent means of
sharing information and views. Unfortunately, the democratic openness of
Internet itself is also under attack by these same forces, who seem
determined to restrict freedom of expression on Internet, and replace the
participatory Internet culture with yet another corporate-controlled,
commercialized, mass-media channel.
But while the open Internet remains in existence, twenty million networked
souls throughout the world provide the basis for "gathering together" people
of good will and democratic spirit more effectively than ever before in
history. Non-trivial as a voting block in their own right, the political
potency of network organizing is even more powerful in terms of the leverage
it offers as an organizing infrastructure, which can extend its reach by
linking up in coalition with traditional political organizations, local
media, etc.
The threatening transformation that is now emerging in the US can be
resisted and, perhaps, even reversed by strong democratization of
Cyberspace. A significant role in future US national elections could be
realized by only 6 to 12 million voters, who represent 5 to 10 percent of
total voters in the 1992 USA Presidential elections, according to the
calculations of Jim Warren, Net-based grassroots political action wizard.
This "voter arithmetic" applies to the USA and to all other democratic
nations with significant participation in Cyberspace.
Among these 20 million are surely many who would welcome the opportunity to
join with others to help find the path toward a democratic future for the
world as we enter the era of the global economy and the Information Age.
--------------------
We hereby call for the creation of a ** Cyberspace Society **, to join
together such people of good will, people who are concerned with the survival
of humanity and the enrichment of the quality of life, and who agree that a
genuine democratic process is the surest hope for a just and prosperous
future.
The Cyberspace Society would at once be an evolving prototype/model for the
democratic process, an enlightened forum for the discussion of democratic
movements in the broader political world, and the forum of strategies and
coalitions to further the practice and benefits of democracy in the world.
The strategic mission of Cyberspace Society would be to educate ourselves
and build the human capacity and strong democratic institutional support
systems during the period from 1995 to 2000, designed to reclaim mastery over
the political powers, as are guaranteed to Americans by the US Constitution,
and belong by natural right to the citizens of all nations, and are in many
cases guaranteed by the laws and constitutions of those nations.
It is appropriate that a Cyberspace-based movement linked and committed to
serving the real world be encouraged for two reasons. First, Cyberspace will
become an increasingly significant "public space," and if it is governed by
narrow business self-interests, will have momentous adverse effects on public
discourse. Second, Cyberspace--linked to the real world--provides the
citizenry with an incredibly potent instrument for education, collaboration,
planning, organization and global consensus building.
A strategic planning group is now being formed to establish a framework for
"The Cyberspace Society" based on: A) the Cyberspace Ethic; and B) the
Cyberspace Social Contract. Founding members of the planning group include:
Vigdor Schreibman, editor and publisher of the Federal Information News
Syndicate; W. Curtiss Priest, Ph.D., director of the Center for Information,
Technology, and Society; and Richard K. Moore, writer, and chairman of the
Cyber-Rights Campaign of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility.
* DRAFT * VISION STATEMENT FOR PLANNING A DESIRABLE FUTURE
BY CITIZENS OF "THE CYBERSPACE SOCIETY"
A. The Cyberspace Ethic
The new institution should educate citizens of Cyberspace, pursuant to an
enlightened democratic ethic for the future of the Information Age. As Ralph
Barton Perry, the philosopher of education, wrote "Democracy is that form
of social organization which most depends on ... the cultivation of
enlightened good will in the body of its citizens." John Warfield, a design
visionary, has observed that enlightened good will means the capacity to
analyze and resolve the issues facing society "through synthesis of ideas,
to arrive at positions that promote the general welfare of the society in
deference to selfish postures of individual pressure groups." There is now
available a body of knowledge and experience that has been applied
successfully in a large variety of academic and real-world situations, which
can facilitate collaborative group inquiry and action required under the
Cyberspace Ethic. A cellular structure will be used, and group work will be
systematically organized so as to include the desirable dimensions of
knowledge and perspective of the Cyberspace Society, including system
designers, system insiders, and system outsiders.
B. The Cyberspace Social Contract
The proposed social contract for Cyberspace should promote citizenship in
"The Cyberspace Society" that is responsive to that ethic. This must be
supported by instrumental measures that effectively support the paramount
social needs of the society and global environment in forms that are not
subject to countervailing profit pressures, which have traditionally
disregarded or even undermined desired social goods. The choice of such
measures would be made exclusively by the citizens of the Cyberspace Society.
The role of the strategic planners will not be to make such decisions but to
assist in the organization and facilitation of free and fair citizen choice.
A 3-part design is proposed:
1) a 3-level infrastructure,
2) a bill of rights, and
3) a set of applications constituting global challenges:
1. Cyberspace infrastructure -- three virtual networks --
interconnected to one another, but each operating with an independent
economic model and social purpose:
a. A public information infrastructure (PII) to assure that core
Government publications are made available in all useful formats for the free
use of the general public. PII would be developed and operated by a central
government institution in close collaboration with all government agencies,
libraries, colleges and universities, schools and other not-for-profit
entities throughout the nation;
b. A global "sustainable development" infrastructure (GSDI) to assure
preservation and restoration of the integrity of natural systems which
sustain both economic prosperity and life itself, and to foster economic
growth, environmental protection, and social equity as interdependent,
mutually reinforcing national goals. GSDI would follow the successful
Internet/NREN model using leveraged government funding, together with direct
financial support and management by not-for-profit and private institutions
at local, state, regional, national, and global levels. Access to GSDI would
be governed by an authorized use policy (AUP), connecting schools, libraries,
hospitals, and local governments to each other and to the Internet/GSDI for
those purposes; and
c. A global information infrastructure (GII), funded and managed by
private industry to provide free market access to voice, data, and video
telecommunications services. The GII would embrace the following six
principles: encourage private investment; promote competition; create a
flexible regulatory framework; provide open access to the network for all
information service providers; ensure universal service; and protect and
promote the free exchange of information and ideas on the GII.
2. Cyberspace bill of rights e.g.:
a. Common carrier structure, separating conduit and
content;
b. Equal access and affordable service;
c. Freedom of expression, privacy, security, and copyright
protection;
3. Cyberspace global challenges applications e.g.:
a. Disease prevention and health promotion;
b. News and citizen discussion of issues in virtual communities
c. Distance learning, child development, worker retraining;
d. Manufacturing, and others.
--------------------
Members of "The Cyberspace Society," are invited to support, criticize, or
amend the draft vision statement, for the betterment of humanity. Charter
membership in "The Cyberspace Society"--for individuals only--costs $10.00.
To become a charter member, send your check or money order to The Cyberspace
Society, c/o FINS, 18 - 9th Street, NE #206, Washington, DC 20002-6042.
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*********** SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER - SUPPORT THE CYBERSPACE SOCIETY **********
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