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Seth Rothberg
sethr@crocker.com
Amherst, MA USA
2/26/96

My Fears for the Internet

     Sorry, I don't think all the black, blue-ribboned pages adorning
     the web are about free speech. And I'm not sure we are really
     talking about democracy today, either. The internet is not going
     to usher in a shining democratic polity built by vibrant
     electronic communities. Technology can't do that. Instead, I
     believe, the internet will tend to reinforce existing power
     structures. Further, I am alarmed by the high suburban walls the
     net makes it easy to build and the increasingly anti-civic voices
     I hear issuing out from behind those rising walls. I would hate
     to see the end of community, presaged by our increasingly
     isolated lives, finished and finalized on the internet, but
     that's what may be happening.

     The web is a mall, not a community. In a community we see all
     kinds of people, all the time. There may be a town common, open
     to everyone. There might be a library, also open to everyone.
     I've been watching the tv coverage of the New Hampshire primary
     this week. When the candidates want to shake hands with people
     there, they go to diners. If you can believe the news, everyone
     in these diners talks politics. Even if you can't believe the
     news, the cliche is worth thinking about. I can't imagine the
     same thing happening in the food court at the mall down on route
     9. People go to the malls to buy. If you don't buy, if you don't
     go to the movies, if you don't lose quarters in the arcades, you
     don't go to the mall. The web is very much like that and that's
     not community.

     It's hard to get rid of people in a community, unless you price
     them out. And even that's not always certain. Picture this: Every
     day a wealthy man on the upper east side of New York city walks
     past a homeless man who shouts at him and demands money. As bleak
     as this is, it still shows more community than what we are seeing
     on the internet, which promises new efficiencies of exclusion. We
     try to get rid of them, but our undesirables just keep coming
     back. This is what makes civic life so difficult, necessary, and
     worthwhile. We must find ways of accommodating those people who
     don't fit our expectations, or who oppose us, or for whom we feel
     a sense of responsibility. Not on the internet, though. On the
     net we can just add the undesirable's name to our kill file. He's
     gone. This is an extension of what is happening in our suburbias.

     There is no free speech on the net; perhaps there is no free
     speech anywhere. I paid a small sum to my ISP to post this and
     many of you are paying similar fees to read it. Am I
     misconstruing the meaning of the phrase, "free speech?" Maybe all
     it means is speech that is unregulated. Funny, that word,
     unregulated. How many business interests want complete government
     deregulation and an wholly unregulated internet? How much will
     free speech be worth when that happens? Corporate web sites, chat
     rooms, and listservers will control speech more effectively than
     any pissant Communications Decency Act. You didn't need a law
     degree or perfect hind sight to know it was doomed in the courts
     the moment it was signed. Free speech on private property is at
     the discretion of the owner. Will there be room for the beggars
     on the hard disks and ram of corporate servers? Or will
     deregulation finally make them disappear for good.

     The picture is not completely bleak. My other web page may prove
     a counter example to all my doom and gloom. I've set it up as the
     unofficial page for the library at which I work. Crocker
     Communications, a local ISP, on which my site is located has
     donated a years worth of connect time to my library and within
     the next few months my web site, or something like it, will
     become the official Jones Library web site. If the library finds
     that being connected to the internet is useful, Crocker may get a
     new paying account. That's community.

     If you know of websites, lists, chat rooms, that help to build
     inclusive communities, write me and I'll post urls and
     descriptions on this site. In the mean time, here's a list of all
     the essays posted for "24 Hours of Democracy" as of Saturday,
     February 24th.

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