roundtable: Infrastructure Realities

roundtable: Infrastructure Realities

Infrastructure Realities

Vigdor Schreibman - FINS (fins@access.digex.net)
Fri, 15 Dec 1995 09:34:20 -0500 

Date: Fri, 15 Dec 1995 09:34:20 -0500
From: Vigdor Schreibman - FINS <fins@access.digex.net>
Message-Id: <199512151434.JAA10821@access2.digex.net>
To: roundtable@cni.org
Subject: Infrastructure Realities


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FINS: Communicating the Emerging Philosophy of The Information Age       
FEDERAL INFORMATION NEWS SYNDICATE                    
Vol III, Issue No. (118 lines)                            December 18, 1995
    
     
CLOSING THE "VALUES-GAP":
Infrastructure Realities
By Vigdor Schreibman

     Among the many distorted priorities that fuel the current public policy
debate none, perhaps, are more egregious than those impacting the emerging
Information Age.  In the name of fiscal austerity imposed by a report of
Congress issued in conjunction with the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act
of FY 1996, the Government Printing Office is pushing through a policy shift
to install an all-electronic depository library program that defies the clear
needs by many users, for public information in printed formats.  This and
many other decisions that have crippled the public information system in past
years, have been falsely based on fiscal grounds.  Since 1980 the Federal
Government has spent some $300 billion on information technology without a
strategy to improve the operations of Government, according to reports of the
General Accounting Office, while freezing expenditures for dissemination of
public information that is the lifeblood of democracy.  In 1995 alone, some
$27 billion was "thrown away" on IT, according to findings of the US Senate,
Aug 4, while only about $30 million was allocated for public information
dissemination by the depository library program.  This reflects a shocking
long-term disparity in Federal information priorities of almost 1000 to 1. 

     The telecommunications reform program proceeding through Congress at
this time follows the same rigged and lopsided scheme governed by corporate
influence peddling without any serious attempt to serve the public interest. 
The legislation would (among other provisions):  sustain a "monster model"
for electronic publishing and information services combining information
content and conduit; grant priority to existing broadcasters for new
broadcast spectrum allocations for digital transmissions potentially worth
$500 billion, without any additional obligation to serve the public interest;
allow cross ownership of newspapers, cable TV, broadcasting, and telephone
systems; and authorize universal service in forms that would not secure the
public goods disregarded by the marketplace but, instead, assure a massive
transfer of wealth from residential ratepayers to corporate centers of power.

     These initiatives are part of the extremist agenda of Speaker New
Gingrich and his Republican cohorts who have also attempted to ram through
Congress a trillion dollar welfare reform and austerity budget plan, the so-
called Republican "Contract With America."  This "Contract" was designed to
weaken environmental standards, loosen workplace safety rules, limit the
legal liability of corporations, defund nonprofit groups that present
opposing views, and grant generous tax benefits to the most wealthy families,
funded by deep cutbacks in health, education, and welfare programs. The idea
was to gratify Republican constituents in a quid pro quo for hefty corporate
campaign donations, according to a Washington Post, page 1 occasional
article, by David Maraniss and Michael Weisskopf, Nov 27.

     Americans have voiced their strong opposition to the Republican
"Contract" in opinion polls, but few groups took to the streets en masse
(as 1.7 million French people did to protest a similar austerity measure
recently!), and effective resistance to the plan has rested largely upon
Presidential veto power. Speaker Newt Gingrich, author of the Republican
"Contract," arrogantly dismissed public opinion about their plan as phoney. 
Gingrich and other Republican leaders have attempted to force the President
to approve their plan by threatening to shut down the Federal Government.  

     There is also another dirty problem buried in these affairs that is now
showing its teeth with a vengeance. The marketplace that governs our economic
affairs mediates decisions based on individual transactions but is blind to
the aggregate impact of those transactions, which may be detrimental to
individuals, society, and the biosphere of Planet Earth.  For example, the
incremental benefits to individual computer system users weigh against others
who do not have the technical knowledge and resources to take advantage of
those benefits.  We call the latter "techno peasants" or "information have-
nots," who are being left behind because no one is planning an adequate
response.  Even librarians, educators, and computer scientists I have spoken
with have a hard time grasping the meaning of this condition because they can
clearly see the reality of what is happening at the individual level but
cannot envision the more abstract aggregate realities, built up over time.  

     The most significant use of information technology being made by
corporate centers of power is to restructure their economic interests so 
that computer-driven machines do the work, while dumping workers in the 
street without alternative means of sustaining their well being and 
survival.  As a consequence of this antilabor philosophy all the material 
benefits derived from IT during the past decade, including the explosive 
shift in political power that this implies, have gone to the most wealthy 
20 percent of American families, while those in the bottom 80 percent 
have been shut out.  At the extremes, the top 1 percent have taken a 
lion's share of the benefits and the bottom 5 percent are being devastated 
with further impoverishment. The major product of the Information Age is 
leading to the most inequitable social and political systems among leading 
industrial countries in the world. 

     Americans should build a National Information Infrastructure that can
counterbalance this trend, but if trusted librarians and other professionals
who are closest to this situation do not speak to these issues of inequity,
who will defend our liberty and justice ? 

     To obtain a more perfect union and insure domestic tranquility in the
21st-century, the Information Age must be founded upon more than a primitive
"morality of the marketplace" that disregards paramount social goods.  A
strategy is required that can best assure the balanced outcome that we
desire: economic prosperity, social equity, and ecological integrity.  The
NII should support those three interdependent goals [Fins-CS-01], and to
avoid continuation of the rigged and lopsided public policy making process on
such matters--a direct vote by citizens should be encourged and facilitated. 

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