roundtable: Re: Vigdor Schreibman - Attack on ALA's Internet Policy Stand Forum

roundtable: Re: Vigdor Schreibman - Attack on ALA's Internet Policy Stand

Re: Vigdor Schreibman - Attack on ALA's Internet Policy Stand

Vigdor Schreibman - FINS (fins@access.digex.net)
Thu, 31 Oct 1996 04:02:29 -0500 (EST) 

Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 04:02:29 -0500 (EST)
From: Vigdor Schreibman - FINS <fins@access.digex.net>
To: Multiple recipients of list <publib-net@nysernet.org>
Subject: Re: Vigdor Schreibman - Attack on ALA's Internet Policy Stand
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9610302026.B11152-0100000@nysernet.org>
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.94.961031010035.27355A-100000@access2.digex.net>


On Wed, 30 Oct 1996, James B. Casey wrote:
> 
> Is the free market place of goods and services entirely separate
> and morally distinct from the free market place of ideas?  Is the 
> business and corporate world where profit motive reigns a monolithic 
> and inherently evil force - similar to the international Communist 
> Conspiracy which had been touted by the John Birch Society years ago?  

  The "free market" of goods, services, and ideas is an oxymoron.  That's
the ideology that gave us a television "wasteland" predicated upon
manipulative infotainment, exploitive sex, and gratuitous violence. 

  Both capitalism and communism are predicated upon the same structure of
power in which strategically placed persons, derived from raw power alone,
seek to dictate the choices of all other people.  Certainly there has been
a difference between these two predator ideologies.  Capitalist managers
have not yet resorted to the exercise of mass terror against Americans but
the same cannot be said for selective acts of terror and violence against 
citizens, which we increasingly see in the news.  

  Moreover, with the collapse of communism, capitalism is now moving to
dominate the global people virtually unopposed. This trend can be clearly
seen, as documented by scholars such as Kevin Phillips, Benjamin Barber,
William Greider, and Lester Thurow, among many others.  The ideology,
which Barber has called "McWorld," is destroying democracy, enlarging
social inequities in obscene terms, and threatening the very survival of
the biosphere of the Planet Earth. 

  Any public interest leader who thinks this is the time to cozy up to the
capitalist machine has lost their marbles. 


> I, for one, don't consider the profit motive to be inherently evil.  
> Certainly it has the capability of evil and the capability of exerting 
> a dangerous controlling influence if taken to an extreme and if no 
> governmental regulation is available to defend basic public interest.  

  There is nothing wrong with the profit motive, in general terms,
provided this is soundly marshalled to serve society and not mere private
self-interests.  For this purpose, we need more than the benevolence of
public officials through mere government regulation to defend against the
dangerous influence of corporate greed.  Far too often public officials
operate in close cooperation with private industry against the public
interest. Increasingly we live in a lawless society where regulations are
falsely touted as superficial evidence of legitimate intention but remain
largely unenforced.  What we must have, instead, is a viable instrumental
structure for democracy, governed by the values of social equity, and
ecological integrity.  These public goods are all disregarded by
capitalist institutions and the two major political parties, which are
their servants.


> However, we do live in a free market economy in which business and 
> corporate interests strive to compete, control and manipulate as best 
> they can.  And we do have a representative form of government which is 
> not totally inept and/or corrupt.

  What cosmos are you living in Casey?  However one may characterize the
existing political system the dominant reality is that the system is
manifestly failing, in the most profound sense.  An examination of the
devastating attack during the past 15 years on libraries, on public
information, on educational institutions, and the obscene 
telecommunication legislation passed by the 104th Congress are signs of
alarming corporate control over our Federal government.  

  Librarians, of all people, should understand these facts, but many that
I have knowledge of, or spoken with, are simply in a state of brooding
denial, paralyzed, unwilling or unable to act decisively in response to
this extraordinary dangerous situation.


> Given this reality, ALA leaders such as Mary Sommerville are trying 
> their best to position ALA within the emerging Internet and to secure 
> for libraries a "place at the table" of power and influence.  This is 
> neither blind appeasement nor a selling of our values.  It is, instead, 
> a careful and logical effort to exert influence for the betterment of 
> our libraries, our profession and our patrons.  

  I disagree.  Library, research and education leadership groups have been
asleep on this issue, as I and others have been saying for years. Langdon
Winner, professor of political science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 
put the issue this way in the Aug 4, 1993 issue of the Chronical of
Higher Education: 
     Again and again, we engaged in a process that I would
     call technological somnambulism--sleep walking our way
     through the process of changing basic patterns of social
     and political relationships.

  Pat Schuman, past President of ALA told me much the same in a telephone
interview in April of 1993, although she later tried to kill the story
when the ALA Washington Office feared embarrassment over their failure.
Fred A. Weingarten, former executive director of Computing Research
Association repeated the concern over this failure in an article published
in Communications, Feb 1995.  The glaring fact remains that library
leadership has yet to produce a coherent vision of the future of
telecommunications, which can serve the American people. 

  We cannot tolerate this unjustifiable and harmful behavior any longer. 
There are alternatives to the domination by industry, such as the
multi-channel democratic National Information Infrastructure I have
proposed [Fins-CS-06].  That structure would assure an authorized use
policy (AUP) free from corrosive profit pressures, with channels of
telecommunications dedicated to serving the essential public goods such as
social equity and ecological integrity which are disregarded by private
business firms.  As I mentioned in my most recent News Column
[Fins-NC4-22], the same kind of publicly supported structure was
recommended by D. Allan Bromley, executive director of the White House
Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Dec 1992, Report to
Congress by the Bush Administration [Fins-II-02, para B.3].

  The proposal made by Mary Sommerville does not respond to the needs of
the American people in this domain.  Americans do not need a "place at the
table,"  which is locked under the total control of fascist corporate
values; we need a different table, one driven by democratic values.  The
need for a balanced telecommunications structure obviously cannot be
derived from explicit acceptance of a corporate dictated
telecommunications systems.  Summerville's amazing recent public statement
was one of simply joining industry to sanction the appalling status quo.

  That structure is designed to maximize corporate profit, while
disregarding public needs and interests.  The mentality exhibited by
Sommerville is a fundamental failure of moral leadership at this late
hour, which is driving our country toward an irreversible catastrophe.

  Indeed, librarians at the GovDoc Internet conference have even attempted
to silence my bringing these matters to public attention by a deliberate
policy to censor FINS News Columns and Special Reports.  They have also
refused to explain their conduct to me despite my repeated requests for an
explanation. This is a betrayal of the historical role of librarians, the
very kind of despicable conduct one must expect from the course now being
charted by Sommerville and her advisors without meaningful public
participation. 


> Remaining aloof from the "unclean" world of business would be roughly
> equivalent to the unwillingness of the U.S. to join the League of 
> Nations following World War I.  We did not participate in the sordid 
> mechanations of European power politics and monsters like Hitler 
> emerged.  If ALA were to chart an "isolationist" course with the 
> Internet or take stands which were at direct variance to the
> basic economic realities of our time, the kind of abuses by corporate
> power brokers which Vigdor Schreibman envisions might well come to 
> pass.

  What nonsense.  Anyone who thinks I am advocating an "isolationist" 
public policy simply does not know what they are talking about.  This
rhetoric is a last quarter punt into the void.  The need for balance in
the structure of democracy is unassailable, and that is my demand.  The
total collapse of library leadership on this issue is indefensible.  This
cannot be accepted by any sane and reasonable American. 

  What can citizens do about this deplorable situation?  The answer
remains as it was at the very start of the democratic movement in the Age
of Enlightenment. 

                         Rise like lions after slumber
                         In unvanquishable number--
                         Shake your chains to earth like dew
                         Which in sleep had fallen on you--
                         Ye are many--they are few.

                                   The Mask of Anarchy
                                   Percy Bysshe Shelley (1819)



Vigdor Schreibman - FINS <fins@access.digex.net>
[Browse Fins Information Age Library at the inforM system 
of the University of Maryland: HTTP://www.inform.umd.edu:
8080/EdRes/Topic/CompResource/CompSoc/FINS/]
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