roundtable: FINS VOL. 2, ISSUE NO. 5

roundtable: FINS VOL. 2, ISSUE NO. 5

FINS VOL. 2, ISSUE NO. 5

Vigdor Schreibman - FINS (fins@access.digex.net)
Fri, 25 Feb 1994 09:23:15 -0500 (EST) 

Date: Fri, 25 Feb 1994 09:23:15 -0500 (EST)
From: Vigdor Schreibman - FINS <fins@access.digex.net>
Subject: FINS VOL. 2, ISSUE NO. 5
To: Vigdor Schreibman - FINS <fins@access.digex.net>
Message-Id: <Pine.3.89.9402250927.A7967-0100000@access2.digex.net>

----------------Original Message Posted in Multiple Lists----------------- 
------------------------Republication Authorized-------------------------- 
    
     
                  READ THIS ISSUE OF FINS TO CONSIDER:      
                                                             
                *   The Structure of "Cultural AIDS"
                                          
                *   Sustaining Our Democratic Cultural Heritage
    
========================================================================= 
  
FINS: Communicating the Emerging Philosophy of The Information Age       
FEDERAL INFORMATION NEWS SYNDICATE                    
Vol II, Issue No. 5 (142 lines)           Embargoed Until February 28, 1994
 
 
CLOSING THE "VALUES-GAP": 
A Loving Fight For Democracy
By Vigdor Schreibman 

	In the electronic information future, distance, location, time, and
language barriers will disappear, revolutionizing the way individuals relate
to one another, and creating a whole new way of learning, working, shopping,
and playing that will change our civilization totally.  A number of
committees of Congress are working on legislation that will define this new
Information Age by transforming the instrumental structure of four key
domains: public information, information resource management, and the
information and telecommunications infrastructure.  [See end-note]. 

	Industry's vision of the Information Age gives license to a mindless
technological imperative.  This is disclosed, for example, by the Computer
Systems Policy Project, an affiliation of chief executive officers of leading
American computer companies, in their latest report, "Perspectives on the
National Information Infrastructure" (Feb 1994).  That vision would unleash
on society the whole awesome power of electronic information systems governed
by no transcendent sense of purpose or meaning, devoid of cultural coherence,
severing the future from the past, annihilating history and the American
heritage.  One critical view warns that this vision--promoted by "zealous
one-eyed prophets who see only what new technologies can do and are incapable
of imagining what they will undue"--is leading to a malignant pathology in
the nature of cultural AIDS.  With cultural AIDS, information that comprises
a culture--and constitutes the information immune system by organizing it by
establishing priorities and by giving it sequence--is inoperable.  

	Here is the emerging structure of this cultural AIDS.  The National
Research and Education Network (NREN) Program, which is one of the great
success stories of contemporary history, is being privatized by the National
Science Foundation.  Instead of being developed to serve the public good, the
new owners of the NREN/NII will be private corporations governed by a
primitive morality of the marketplace that disregards public goods.  The new
"knowledge monopolies," will be granted primary authority to define the
standards of control between and among information appliances, NII
applications, information services and network service providers. 
Telecommunications services including video programming are to be freed from
customary restrictions and limitations on common carriers, without dependable
protection against their monopolistic conduct relying on regulatory measures
that have proven in the past to be ineffective.  For instance, Bell Operating
Companies have been allowed to overcharge local ratepayers over $50 billion
dollars during the past decade according to a carefully documented analysis
released Feb 18, 1994 by the Consumer Federation of America, which the BOCs
have refused to explain.  Moreover, the Regional Holding Companies have used
their monopoly over local exchange systems as a resource-base for leveraged
global empire building, while decreasing the rate of capital investments in
the public switched network.  In addition, the cost of information and
telecommunications services that are now being created will be charged to
local ratepayers without equitable allocation to long distance ratepayers of
relevant costs for their use of local exchange facilities.  This will
unjustly enriching the phone companies, television broadcasters, newspapers,
and other corporate centers of wealth.  And governing the whole enterprise
is the so-called primary "public interest" standard of the Communications Act
of 1934, which remains bereft of legal definition, but gives sanction to the
illegitimate governance that some would install over the Information Age.  

	Colossal industry moguls, through massive lobbying efforts by their
telecommunications PACS are attempting to compromise the wise judgment of
the entire membership of Congress.  These moguls wish to maximize the power
and profit of private industry at the expense of society-at-large.

	In a nation called democracy, people whose lives are directly affected
by the decisions of their Government that will change our civilization
totally, must be given an opportunity to participate meaningfully in the
decision-making process.  Nevertheless, citizens are now being treated as
mere spectators to a choice between an assortment of inane and incoherent
legislative measures.  Some public interest advocates have begun quibbling
over the pieces of that muddled pie.  I would choose a loving fight to
sustain the cultural heritage of democracy in the Information Age.

	What we require first, is a national initiative to adequately inform
citizens about alternative possibilities for the future.  This initiative
should be coordinated by schools, libraries, and voluntary organizations. 
Secondly, there are four public policy goals that are, perhaps, of greatest
significance to the society that should be explored in that initiative:
	(a) enhancing the Government Printing Office in its historic role of
producing Government publications, and the Depository Library Program in its
role of disseminating public information in all useful formats to designated
Federal and State libraries for the free use of the general public; 
	(b) establishing a Federally chartered NREN, connecting all schools,
libraries, voluntary organizations, and local governments to each other and
to the Internet to assure universal information and telecommunications
services in support of the human, social, and ecological priorities of the
American people; 
	(c) developing a NII, providing commercial voice, data, and video
telecommunications services to the offices and homes of all Americans; and
	(d) fostering the promise of open, reciprocal international exchange of
information through the internet.             

	Until an adequate exploration of these goals is realized, citizens
should demand that the legislative agenda for the NII--be held in obeyance.


----------                   
Federal Information News Syndicate, Vigdor Schreibman, Editor & Publisher, 
18 - 9th Street NE #206, Washington, DC 20002-6042.  Copyright 1994 FINS.  
Internet: fins@access.digex.net. To obtain News_Columns, Special_Reports,
Congressional_Directories, Periodicals_and_Newspapers, and relevant public
policy papers visit Fins_InfoAge Lib located at the University of Maryland. 
If you have a Gopher client : gopher to inform.umd.edu and go to directory
Educational_Resources/Computers_and_Society/Fins_InfoAge. If you have ftp :
ftp to inform.umd.edu [login anonymous] cd to inforM/ and the same directory.

=============================================================================
End-note.  Pending legislation includes e.g., (PUBLIC INFORMATION)   Sabo:
H.R.3400, title XIV "Government Information Dissemination and Printing
Improvement Act of 1993," (Passed by House Nov. 22, 93); Boren: S.1824, title
IIIC, pt. IV "Joint Committee on Printing," (Introduced Feb 3, 94); H.R.3801,
title IIID, sec. 372 "Joint Comnmittee on Information Management" (Introduced
Feb 3, 94); (INFORMATION RESOURCE MANAGEMENT)   Nunn: S.560 "Paperwork
Reduction Act of 1993," (Introduced Mar 10, 93); Glen: S.681 "Paperwork
Reduction Reauthorization Act of 1993," (Introduced Mar 31, 93); Sisisky:
H.R.2995 "Paperwork Reduction Act of 1993" (Introduced Aug 6, 93);
(INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE)   Hollings: S.4, title VI "Information
Infrastructure and Technology Act of 1992" (Reported by Senate Committee on
Commerce Jul 28, 93); Boucher: H.R.1757 "National Information Infrastructure
Act of 1993" (Passed by House Jul 26, 93); Markey: H.R.2639
"Telecommunications Infrastructure and Facilities Assistance Act of 1993"
(Passed by House Nov 8, 93); (TELECOMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE)   Hollings:
S.1822 "Communications Act of 1994" (Introduced Feb 3, 94); Brooks-Dingell:
H.R.3626 "Antitrust Reform Act of 1993" (Introduced Nov 22, 93; Markey:
H.R.3636 "National Communications Competition and Information Infrastructure
Act of 1993" (Introduced Nov 22, 93)]  [Legis abstracts of these measures are
available in Fins_InfoAge files: Fins-PI-Leg; Fins-IRM-Leg; Fins-II-Leg; and
Fins-TI-Leg.

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