Ian & Stuart's Australian Mac: Not for Sale/Another.not.for.sale (Australia).iso/hold me in your arms/Michael Ney's Cyberculture/Cyberculture/THE ELECTRONIC COMMONS

Text File | 1994-09-02 | 101KB | 1,766 lines

Topic 378       THE ELECTRONIC COMMONS  7 responses
web:msurman     cyberculture zone        8:23 PM  Jun 26, 1994


FROM VTR TO CYBERSPACE:
Jefferson, Gramsci & the Electronic Commons

by Mark Surman ([e-mail])

************************************

The following is a paper on electronic public space and democratic
communications.  It brings together the history of community
access television and experiences of activism on the Internet in
an effort to vision the future of the "electronic commons" amidst
a world of commerical boradband "superhighways".

Each section of the paper has been posted as a seperate response
to this topic.

************************************************** For a complete
version of this paper -- including pictures, sidebar commentary
and a full bibliography -- contact Mark Surman ([e-mail])

This paper is COPYRIGHT MARK SURMAN (1994).  Permission is granted
to duplicate, print or repost this paper as long as it is done on
a non-commercial basis (ie. keep it free) and as long as the whole
paper is kept intact.
**************************************************


FROM VTR TO CYBERSPACE:
Jefferson, Gramsci & the Electronic Commons

by Mark Surman ([e-mail])

************************************

1.  INTRODUCTION

"Those of us who recognize that change comes in increments of one,
five, ten, and twenty-five, need no convincing that public access
TV will  provide the nucleus for a post bureaucratic, vaguely
anarchic video pajama party."

          (Kika Thorne -- member of the SHE/tv video collective)

I spent most of my younger years looking for anarchy and the joys
of a video pajama party.  But I never found them _ at least not in
the flat bland-lands of television on which I grew up.  As someone
who started working in the electronic glitz biz at the tender age
of 16, my TV world was filled with mindless American violence
imports, poster girl posting technicians, the dawn of the three
minute pop music commercial, and a great deal of frustration.  For
one moment in my early TV years, I naively attempted to insert
peace activism into the virtual violence that I sent over the
airwaves for a living.  I produced one little low tech commercial,
advertising one very small peace event.  It ran once and then it
was pulled.  The only answer I ever received to my million "whys"
was a big "because".

Ever since, I have been trying to bring my activism to every
communications space that would give me a few minutes to speak my
mind _ alternative print, computer networks, television. Where TV
land is concerned, I have realized that there are a myriad of
openings through which one can sneak ones activism into "the box".
You can go out and buy a Fisher Price PixelVision camera and
document your dissent _ but it is unlikely that many people will
see what you have done.  You can go to journalism or film school,
move to New York or Hollywood, and try to "change the system from
within" _ but this is a dangerous and personally painful journey.
You can spend six months writing an arts council grant and make a
relatively high quality magnum opus of electronic resistance _ but
it may only show to nine other activists at a far off film
festival.  Or, you can start making activist television right now,
for free, and broadcast it to thousands of eager viewers by using
your local community access TV facility.  For the past five years,
I have been using community television as my activist intervention
into the television realm.

In theory, the community channel is the utopia of social change
media freaks.  It's free.  You get trained on how to use the
equipment (so you don't have to spend all that time and money
going to TV school).  There's no censorship of your ideas.
Everybody from the community has an equal opportunity to use the
channel.  Your programs inhabit a spot on the TV sets of thousands
upon thousands of channel surfers.  Sounds like the perfect place
for an anti-big-business-anarchist-cooking-show, doesn't it?
Unfortunately, it's not.  Because that's just the theory _ and we
all know about the tenuous connection between theory and what
actually happens.  In reality, the Canadian community channel is
only a good place for activism as long as you don't offend anybody
too important.  I have helped air programs showing political
protest, civil disobedience, the propaganda value of the Gulf War
media coverage, and the beauty of human powered art vehicles.  But
try doing a show about representations of sexuality. [SIDEBAR --
Nadia Sistonen's The Crux of The Gist of The Biscuit, which showed
a vagina smoking a cigarette, is a among a handful of programs
pulled from Toronto community channels over the past few years for
being "offensive".]  Or, even better, try making a media activist
show that criticizes the cable company that runs your local
community channel.  No way.

This gap between the way the community channel is supposed to work
and the way it does work hasn't stamped out my interest in access
TV, it's just made me shuffle sideways a little.  I have shuffled
to places that take the good parts of community television and
combine them with new ideas, and new ways of organizing.  And I
have looked at the ways that creative activist TV producers all
over North America have made the best of access channels where
they live.

I have also started to experiment with a model of an open,
uncensored, grassroots, people-controlled media system that exists
outside the realm of television _ the Internet.  Although it
doesn't allow me to send videos out to the world, the Internet
does fulfill many of my activist communication desires.  It lets
me share my ideas with people all over the world.  It lets me find
information that is so unique, so activist, so challenging to "the
way things are" that it would probably never make it into a
bookstore.  In these ways, the Internet is a bit like an
internationally linked, text-based community access channel
without the censorship problem. But the Internet certainly has its
problems too.  It's hard to get around, it's not free , it's
generally male dominated, and you've got to own a computer.  In my
activist communication dreams, I'd like to bring the best parts of
the Internet and the best parts of the community channel together.

Which brings us to the "crux of the gist" of this paper _ how to
create a perfect world for activist videomakers and anyone else
who wants to express themselves electronically.  Well, maybe not a
perfect world, but a better one at least.  I would like to suggest
that it really is possible to merge the best parts of the Internet
and the community channel to create a more democratic and
sustainable system of public, grassroots communication.  To figure
out how, we will have to look back at the original dream of
community television and listen to the people who dreamed it.   We
should also explore the problems that this dream had when it came
of age, and what activist video producers in the 1990's have done
to deal with weak points of community TV.  And of course we should
think about he Internet, about all of the people who swear by it
and at all of the activist projects that have used it.  With all
these perspectives, we just might be able to figure out a strategy
to get ourselves a hip new, totally open, people-centred,
accessible, egalitarian, grassroots, electronic communications
system.  Or, something like that.

But first we should take a quick look at where all of this
electronic democracy stuff came from.  In the late 1960's, there
were a bunch of people who saw social change flowing from the
mouth of a twenty year old electronic pipe _ cable television.
The cable industry, government bureaucrats, academics, liberals
and progressives in both Canada and the US all gathered around the
cable hearth to argue that the proliferation of this "new"
technology could "...rehumanize a dehumanized society, ...
eliminate the existing bureaucratic restrictions of government
regulation common to the industrial world and ... empower the
currently powerless public." The revolutionary potential of cable
technology was attributed to its ability to open up more bandwidth
_ to offer more channels _ than off-air TV.  Another new
technology  _ the 1/2" portable videotape recorder (VTR) _ was
making similar if smaller utopian waves at the same time.  New
technology made video recorders cheap enough and light enough that
average middle class people could buy their own camera and VTR to
make home TV.  Hand-in-hand with the increased bandwidth of cable,
it was often argued that VTR could lead to a new age of
people-centred communication.  Of course these predictions were
nothing new: "...every step in modern media history _ telephone,
photograph, motion picture, radio, television, satellite _ stirred
similar euphoric predictions.  All were expected to usher in an
age of enlightenment.  All were seen as filling the promise of
democracy."

But some of the ends to which all of this rhetoric was taken were
new.  While the general utopian buzz implied that more bandwidth
and cheap VTR's in and of themselves could create a brave new
world, there were people who argued that specific political and
economic models were needed to make this techno-democracy dream
come true.  Community access TV advocates argued that the
prophesied social changes would only occur if there were specific
structures aimed at promoting information democracy.  The
structures in question were community access channels and the TV
production equipment needed to fill these channels with grassroots
programming.

There were two general approaches to the access channel.  One saw
community television as the electronic equivalent of Jeffersonian
democracy, as an electronic commons where equality, free speech
and democratic dialogue would abound. The other saw the community
channel as a Gramscian "activist project", a place that would
specifically help those who had been left without a voice by the
corporate media world of network television. [SIDEBAR -- Antonio
Gramsci was an Italian communist who talked about hegemony and
counter-hegemony, or how domination and resistance work in
capitalist democracies.  I am using the phrase "activist project"
in place of the more academic phrase "counter-hegemonic project".
Later in the paper I will also substitute the phrase
"counter-cultural" for "counter hegemonic".  The point of all this
is to avoid alienating academic language.  For a more detailed
explanation of hegemony and counter-hegemony, see Appendix One,
What is a Hegemony Anyways?]  Although both visions of community
TV floated around North America in the late sixties and early
seventies, Canadian and American community channels eventually
took diverse paths, tending towards one or the other of these
visions.   American access channels moved towards the Jeffersonian
electronic commons _ open to everyone without discrimination.  A
warped version of the "activist project" _ open only to
"disadvantaged communities" _ has dug itself in at Canadian
community channels.

Today _ more than twenty years after people started building
community channels _ a new generation of technological utopians,
Jeffersonian democrats and Gramscian activists seem to be coming
out of the woodwork.  They're talking in much the same language
about much the same thing, but this time in relation to the
Internet and the new broadband multi-media networks that have been
dubbed "superhighways". The Internet and the superhighway are not
the same thing.  Once built, the new broadband superhighways may
or may not resemble the current Internet in terms of form, access
and freedom.[SIDEBAR -- The new techno-utopians _ like their
predecessors _ are predicting that more bandwidth will change the
world, although this time around they think we need 500 channels
instead of 20 to do the job.  The Jeffersonians see the Internet
as the perfect model of an electronic commons and want to ensure
that model makes it to the "superhighway".  The Gramscian
activists are trying to ensure that both the Internet and the new
broadband networks contain spaces that promote voice and access
for marginalized communities.

The important question that faces both the community channel
advocates of twenty years ago and the access advocates of today
is: how do you bring the best of both these visions together?  At
a time when new networks could change the nature of both community
television and the Internet, how can we develop grassroots media
ideals and visions for the future, while at the same time
maintaining the good principles and practices of the past?  To
start answering these questions, we should go back and talk to
Thomas Jefferson.



2.  THOMAS JEFFERSON GETS WIRED

Thomas Jefferson sits at the centre of the American democratic
myth.  He is an icon of individualism, free speech for the common
people, education and democratic rights.  He is the "...most
conspicuous of American apostles of democracy."  His name conjures
up a time in American history when the townsfolk gathered in town
halls and in the commons to debate issues, and when the media was
a "public sphere" filled with small, partisan newspapers. [SIDEBAR
-- This idea comes from communications theorist Jurgen Habermas
who argued that a "democratic public sphere" existed in the 18th
and 19th centuries when small partisan presses and other minor
institutions created the possibility of debate.  Habermas claimed
that the state and corporate media had destroyed the democratic
public sphere by the beginning of the 20th century. (Kellner 1990,
pp. 13 -14.)] In short, he represents all of the myths of America
that started to sputter and zig-zag during the late 1960's.

Offering itself up as an electronic commons in an age of weakening
democratic myths, community access television was perfectly timed.
Hippies and liberals alike argued that community access television
could rekindle Jeffersonian democracy by providing a central
soapbox (the commons) and media opportunities devoid of corporate
control (the public sphere).  Books, speeches and big-time
magazine articles all trumpeted the coming of this democratic new
age.  In the introduction to his book, Video Power, Chuck Anderson
describes this vision in all of its passion: "In a democratic
society, active dialogue is held to be the ideal approach to
problem solving.  There was once a time when a broad
representation of the community was able to get together in a town
hall and hold this kind of dialogue."  Anderson argued that such
dialogue had been eliminated by the growth of cities, the power of
experts and corporate media. He also argued that community TV
could bring us back to that Jeffersonian Shangri-La:  "By using
the television set that is in everyone's living room as a forum
for community self expression, we may be able to realize the
democratic dialogue."

From this Jeffersonian vision the community access channel as
electronic commons was born.  Channels were opened up across North
America to be used by everyone, free of charge on a first-come,
first served basis.  In many cases, access facilities included
production equipment as well as a channel on which to air finished
programs. Community members were free to say anything they wanted
as long as it was not commercial, libelous or obscene.

This Jeffersonian television was especially suited to America, as
it was rooted in American myths.  In 1972, the FCC mandated that
cable operators in the 100 largest markets provide channels for
"public access".   In addition, the legal thinking of the time was
that the First Amendment guaranteed a "...general public right of
access to the media."  But it was not just the legal and policy
mood of America in the early seventies that kept the Jeffersonian
vision of community television running _ this idea had resonated
on a much deeper level.   As one activist TV producer from New
York has said, "...the gospel of access had spread quickly
throughout the country."   Despite the elimination of the FCC's
access mandate in 1979, the number of open access channels grew in
the US throughout the 1980's and the gospel continued to spread.
Most American community channels continue to be run on an open
access, first-come, first-served basis.

Although it never became the rule in Canada, the vision of a
Jeffersonian electronic commons made many border crossings during
the 1970's.  In its 1977 community channel handbook, The New
Communicators, the Canadian Cable Television Association (CCTA)
said that "...cable technology makes it possible for people to
have access to television as a citizen right." And this was not
just talk.  Many early Canadian community channels experimented
with the open access, electronic commons model.  In a 1973 article
from the Challenge for Change Newsletter, Calgary community
programming manager Wendy O'Flaherty explained that her policy
"...was to permit and encourage unrestricted access to the channel
by the public.  No screening of users was practised, with the
exception of screening out people with commercial purposes, groups
with other resources available to them (schools), and avoiding
duplication and overuse by evangelical religious groups."  This
sort of experiment with the electronic commons only made brief
stays on Canadian soil.

The problem that emerged with both American and Canadian
experiments in totally open access channels was that they often
did not create the great gardens of democracy that had been
prophesied.  It became obvious that simply opening up channels and
providing equipment was almost as ineffective at creating social
change as the laissez faire approach of the technological
utopians.  The people who showed up to use the community channels
were often not the people the original access advocates had
expected.  As one example, O'Flaherty's open access channel in
Calgary was used by groups like the Ku Klux Klan, local
ego-trippers, the Aquarium Club and right wing evangelists.
O'Flaherty also points out that "...virtually no use was made of
the cable facilities by social action groups, social agencies,
Challenge for Change, or other people interested in social
change."  Many American access channels still tend to be dominated
by conservative groups and ego-trippers, with little
representation from the real margins of society.  These
circumstances point to a key flaw in the electronic commons
approach to community television _ it does not address media
literacy, burnout in volunteer organizations, or the psychological
relationship between social institutions (of which the access
channel is one) and marginalized communities.

American community channels faced an additional challenge _ cable
operators were often reluctant to provide the funding needed to
keep the electronic commons well maintained.  There are dozens of
stories about American cable companies reneging on access
contracts, moving away from the open access model or shutting down
access channels altogether.  In Buffalo, New York _ where there is
a thriving group of activist video makers using community TV _
there has been a broad range of difficulties associated with
getting and maintaining the access channel.  Until 1984, the
access channel was controlled by a cable company that favoured
censorship and made no connection between "access" and "free
speech".  Buffalo city council put control of the channel in the
hands of the community in 1984, but it was a number of years
before an organization with proper access guidelines and policies
was given control of the channel and production facilities.  Even
though Buffalonians are now guaranteed access to their community
channel, there continues to be conflict over First Amendment
rights between the access channel board and a pro-censorship city
council.  Although other problems exist, Canadian community
channels do not have problems with funding or local politicians,
as the CRTC both universally mandates the terms of community
channel operation and requires all cable companies with over 3000
subscribers to contribute at least five percent of their revenue
to the community channel.

Despite the problem of underuse by social change groups and the
difficulty of maintaining funding in the US, the community channel
as electronic commons is not a vision that should be discarded.
American channels that run on this model still offer something
unique _ a total guarantee of access to video distribution.
Although this is not enough in itself, it does provide a good
foundation from which to build new approaches to activist
television.  Before we look at these approaches, we should see how
the Gramscian activist project style of community TV developed in
Canada as an alternative to the problems of the open access
model.



3.  UNCLE GRAMSCI AND THE ACTIVIST VIDEO MAKERS

After a year with the Klan and right-wing preachers knocking at
her door, Wendy O'Flaherty decided to institute a limited access
policy at her Calgary community channel.  She stated that "...a
policy of restricted public access to the community channel is
preferred to unrestricted access, with access being given to
disadvantaged and emerging groups and to individuals and peoples
with alternate material."   This January 1973 statement marked the
end of the open electronic commons in Calgary, and reflects the
approach to community access television that has been taken
throughout Canada.   It is an approach that is in theory committed
to alternative programming but which does not guarantee free
access to the community channel.

This idea of creating media spaces that are open only to those who
are shut out by other media can be linked to the thinking of
Italian communist Antonio Gramsci.  Gramsci argued that the power
of dominant forces in a capitalist democracy is maintained by
cultural means  _ by elaborate and unconscious transfers of common
sense that lead most people to accept our economic and political
systems as "the way things are", as the natural order of things.
[SIDEBAR -- This is Gramsci's theory of hegemony.  For more on
this, see Appendix One: What Is A Hegemony Anyways?]  The only way
to create a social transformation in a society where culture is
power, is to fight back with culture.  Thus, Gramsci envisioned
counter-cultural' projects created by people who had come together
in coalitions opposed to "the way things are".  Such projects
would emphasize the ideas and perceptions of average people, and
would be specifically open to those who wanted to take an
oppositional stance. Gramsci, in his belief that social
transformation must happen at the grassroots, stressed the
importance of popular media in the struggle for cultural change.
From his prison cell in the 1930's, he argued that a "new
literature" could not ignore popular forms like the serial novel
or the detective novel.

Although very few of the early access advocates would have gone so
far as to associate themselves with an Italian communist, those
who argued for "limited access" were talking about very Gramscian
ideas.  As opposed to the Jeffersonian electronic commons approach
_ which implied that open access would automatically equalize
society on its own _ the limited access approach saw the community
channel as something that would specifically serve
counter-cultural movements.  It also stressed that media should be
produced by the grassroots rather than about the grassroots _ that
the marginalized should make their own images.  This approach to
community television saw itself in direct opposition to the way
the major TV networks were constructing our imaginary worlds.

The link between these Gramsci-style ideas and the development of
community television is the National Film Board of Canada's
Challenge for Change program.  Between 1966 and 1975, Challenge
for Change attempted to use film and video to "... help eradicate
the causes of poverty by provoking basic social change."   To do
this, the NFB put film and video cameras in the hands of social
activists and marginalized communities, made films showing people
how video could be used for social intervention, sponsored access
television pilot projects and published a newsletter that served
as a philosophical focal point for people interested in media as
activist project.  Challenge for Change emphasized two points
throughout its existence _ that people who wanted social change
needed a media culture that was just for them and that these
people should be making their own media.  This social change media
philosophy was a major contributing factor to the development of
grassroots-oriented, limited access policies at Canadian community
channels.  Following the lead of Challenge for Change and
grassroots-minded community channel staff like O'Flaherty, both
the cable industry and government regulators embedded social
change catch phrases like "citizen participation" and "community
self expression" into documents relating to community television.

With these impressive philosophical and regulatory underpinnings,
it is hard to imagine how the Canadian community channel could
have gone wrong as an outlet for social change media.  But, in
many ways, it has gone very wrong.  With the limited access
approach, the power to decide what is alternative, what is
community and what gets on the channel all lie in the hands of the
cable company staff.

From the perspective of some social change access advocates,
putting decisions about "what gets on" into the hands of community
TV staff was the original strength of limited access.  Most of the
people who ran Canadian community channels in the early seventies
came either from social activism or from Challenge for Change, or
at least were people who had been caught up in the grassroots
rhetoric of the time.  These people were able to use limited
access to keep conservative or well established groups out and
bring marginalized groups in.  But many early staffers eventually
left community television, or they started to become more
conscious of what would offend their employers.   George Stoney,
the original head of the Challenge for Change program, saw a
direct link between this "employee consciousness" and the move
towards more conservative programming.  "I went up there in 1982
for a panel at a Canadian cable television conference, and when I
screened all of the programs entered for awards I was appalled at
how uncontroversial and essentially dull most of it was.  It could
have been made in the Queen's parlor.  I divined that this was
because it was all made or facilitated by cable company employees.
Although most of the coordinators came out of a good Canadian
tradition of social animation they couldn't help but look over
their shoulders to see how the company that was providing their
salaries was responding."

In addition to the drift away from Challenge for Change idealism
and towards "employee consciousness", the type of people who cable
companies hire has also changed over the years.  Early community
channel staff tended to be people with activist or social science
backgrounds, whose training was primarily in people and ideas
skills.  Television technical skills were often picked up along
the way.  This bias was stated in the CCTA's New Communicators:
"When cable managers advertise a program staff position they would
be wise to stress people skills.  They would of course say 'a
knowledge of television would be an asset'.  That is not intended
to play down television skills.  It is to stress that television
skills are more readily accessible than the community skills or
human qualities the job demands."   The importance of people
skills over technical skills for programming staff was also
mentioned in the CRTC's 1975 brief outlining its new community
channel regulations.  But this bias didn't last long.  The
Canadian community channel today is looked upon as an easy first
job for people just out of broadcasting college.  These people
have brought with them the aesthetics, values and working styles
of broadcast television.  They have also brought ideas about
"professionalism" and "technical quality" which are not very
compatible with putting TV into the hands of "the people".

These "professional" broadcast values have had a profound effect
on the day to day operation of community channels, and on the
nature of access itself.  Some of the traditional myths
surrounding TV are: (1) television production equipment is hard to
use and breaks easily; and (2) only professionals should be making
TV.  These are exactly the myths that community television tried
to undermine from the beginning.  But any undermining that had
occurred was quickly undone by the new cadre of "community TV
broadcasting professionals".  Many community channels have rebuilt
myth number one _ "this stuff is tricky" _ by instituting long,
drawn out, hierarchical training programs that frame the technical
end of TV production as a secret art.  As these courses are often
mandatory, a group wanting access may have to spend a year and a
half learning how to use studio equipment before they are able to
touch the portable camera and editing system that they wanted
access to in the first place.  Also, these mandatory courses mean
that activist media makers with years of previous training or
experience have to spend valuable time jumping through training
hoops.

Myth number two _ "professionals only" _ has been brought back to
life by cable companies who have introduced "paid volunteers".
Community channels who use this system put new volunteers on
boring, low profile productions until they are "good enough" to
work on higher profile shows, for which they are paid.  Such
professional hierarchies totally destroy any fiction of grassroots
TV production that may have been left over from old community
channel rhetoric.

This move towards the "professionalized" community channel _
especially the introduction of paid volunteers _  was helped along
by the introduction of sponsorship by the CRTC.  Since 1986,
community channels have been able to sell PBS style advertising
billboards at the beginning and end of each program.  On an
obvious level, this development has flushed the non-commercial
nature of community access down the drain.  On a subtler level, it
has led to the professionalization of production mentioned above,
as well as aesthetic uniformity and censorship.  Rogers Community
10 in Toronto is rumored to bring in more than $100,000 a year in
sponsorship revenues.   With that kind of money flowing in, it is
essential that they provide "high quality" programming for the
sponsors.  In community TV land, "high quality" is usually a
euphemism for traditional broadcast aesthetics, boring topics and
a ban on controversy.   As sponsorship revenue must stay within
the community channel, Rogers pumps the money right back into
professionalization projects like the purchase of high tech, hard
to use equipment and the payment of "volunteers".   Such
"professionalism" is a guarantee of "high quality".

Another factor which has contributed to the Canadian community
channel's shift away from its social change roots is an
overemphasis on the mandate for local programming.  When the CRTC
defined the role of community television, it put local community
programming on par with the ideas of access and citizen
participation.  This made sense at the time, as most media images
reflected the metropolitan location of the people who made them.
Except for local news, most of the programming that Canadians saw
in the early 1970's came from Toronto, Montreal, New York or Los
Angeles.  The local aspect of the community channel was intended
to counter-balance these dominant metropolitan images.  But, as
Raymond Williams argues, there are dangers to this local focus of
community television.  "The community emphasis is so right, in its
own terms, and could so notably contribute to solving the problems
of urban information flow, democratic discussion and
decision-making and community identity, that it is easy to
overlook the dimension that is inevitably there, beyond the
community _ the nation and the world with which it is inevitably
involved." E  This overlooking of that which is beyond the
community is exactly what has happened in Canadian community
television.  The local aspect of the CRTC mandate is stressed by
some community channel staff to the point that
geographically-generic, yet underrepresented ideas _ like
feminism, peace, environmentalism _ are often denied access
because they don't specifically identify themselves as "local".

Although the shift in staff, the opening up of sponsorship and the
overemphasis on the local aspects of programming are key factors
in the erosion of the social change focus at community channels in
Canada, the central problem is still who ultimately controls "what
gets on" _ privately owned cable companies .  "A fundamental
problem has always dogged community access television (in Canada):
It is a democratic concept with a democratic structure.  The
community channel is and always has been under the direct control
of the licensee."  This is unlikely to change soon, as cable
regulations put the responsibility for community channel content
in the hands of the cable operators.  It is the cable company that
will be sued or lose their license if libelous, obscene or
copyrighted material makes it to air, not the community member who
produced the show.  This means two things.  Cable companies are
very conservative about programs that push any of these
boundaries, shutting out people who want to criticize the
corporate media by "sampling" copyrighted images and people who
want to explore sexuality through their programming.  The cable
companies are also unlikely to give up control over the content as
long as they are held responsible _ meaning that a totally open
access channel is almost an impossibility without regulatory
changes.

Strict cable company control of community TV in Canada has been
linked both to the blandness of the channel and the disappearance
of "citizen access".   In Dot Tuer's recent article on the
Canadian community TV landscape, she describes a boring and
uncontroversial evening of programming from the highly
professionalized Rogers Community 10 Toronto.  It included:
"...the Canadian Club Speakers Series, the Cancer Society Fashion
Show, Festival of Festivals Trade forums ... and the Lemon-Aid
phone-in show on cars."  Hardly the radical programming advocated
by early access prophets!  Frank Spiller, one of the architects of
the CRTC's 1975 community channel policy, talks about the
disappearance of access in a 1982 report entitled Community
Programming in Canada.  "One has the sense, after looking at what
has actually happened, that while a genuine effort was actually
made to provide citizen "hands-on" access in the early years, this
has progressively declined so that today such a form of access is
the exception rather than the rule."

Spiller's comments describe the central problem of community
television in Canada _ it was set up as a Gramscian activist
project to promote social change, but it has become as timid, and
often as inaccessible, as other privately controlled media.  Of
course the Canadian community channel is not a complete wasteland.
There are people in the cable industry who live out the original
ideals of Challenge for Change and access, but they are far from
the dominant voice in how community TV is run.  One must remember
that the limited access approach of Canadian community television
originally offered itself up as a solution to the problems of the
American electronic commons.  As such a solution, it has not fared
well.  It has not been able to sustain itself as a "social change
media space", as a place totally dedicated to the media
empowerment of marginalized communities.  The reason for this may
have something to do with the total abandonment of the electronic
commons and guaranteed open access.  A mix of free speech and
social change ideals may have proven a better approach.  To see
how such a mix is possible, we should take quick and creative walk
with Gramsci on the electronic commons.




4.  ACTIVIST OUTPOSTS ON THE ELECTRONIC COMMONS

As it became apparent that both the American electronic commons
and the Canadian approach of grassroots-focused limited access had
their problems, many creative and flexible media activists started
to come up with hybrid solutions that mixed the best of both
worlds.  These solutions have incorporated the idea that an open
electronic commons is needed if activists are to be guaranteed
access to a channel and the idea that infrastructures specifically
committed to social change are needed if marginalized communities
are to develop a stronger voice.  This approach acknowledges that
even if you don't believe in the Jeffersonian myth, it is an
essential foundation to the successful development of a Gramscian
activist project.  Gramsci certainly recognized this.  His ideas
about the "activist project" assume that the counter-cultural
coalition is working within a capitalist democracy, where at least
the myth of free speech and open political opposition exist.

In practice, the activist project on the electronic commons takes
the form of autonomous social change media "institutions".  Such
organizations can take almost any shape _ a group of friends, an
issue-centred collective, a media access group, a non-profit
production company _ as long as they stick to the goal of making a
space that is nurturing for the communities that they work with.
These activist institutions gain strength, flexibility and
practicality by using the access channel for what it does best _
guarantee a place to show and produce programs  _ and taking care
of the social change media organizing themselves.  They gain a
certain level of credibility and legitimacy just by giving
themselves a name.  Such legitimacy is useful not only as a public
relations ploy _ making it seem like a massive activist cultural
force is looming just over the horizon _ but also as a means to
attract new members and sustain the momentum of the group.  These
groups also contribute to the creation of a social infrastructure
of alternative media, building up media literacy, production
skills, ways of organizing and networks of people.  Best of all,
activist media institutions are no single entity, no single voice.
There are groups that deal with feminism, race issues, workers'
rights, the environment and any other issue that you can imagine
New groups pop up all over the place, all the time, contributing
to the development of a broad and diverse counter-culture of
activist media.

A number of media hip activists in Buffalo, New York have set up
counter-cultural institutions like this to reflect a variety of
issues that concern them.  As one example, Barbara Lattanzi, Armin
Heurich, Chris Hill, Brian Springer and other Buffalonians formed
the Media Coalition for Reproductive Rights (MCRR) in 1989 to
insert a radical pro-choice voice into the upstate New York
abortion debate.  They used a number of strategies to make
themselves a "community institution" _ they took on a name and an
acronym, they went on the access channel asking others to join
their group, and they produced a regular public access series.
In addition to taking on this grassroots institutional function,
the MCRR has set itself up as a safe-soapbox for pro-choice
activists who don't want to show their faces on TV or open
themselves up to public attack by violent anti-choice groups. They
have done this by using rubber finger puppets representing
anti-choice characters as the focal point of their show, allowing
activists to speak their mind without being seen.

A more widely talked about example of a successful activist access
"institution" is Paper Tiger Television (PTTV) in New York City.
Since 1981, PTTV has produced over 200 low-tech public access
programs criticizing and deconstructing the corporate media
culture.  They have produced episodes like: Unpacking Ted Koppel's
Revolution in a Box; Staking a Claim in Cyberspace; and Herb
Schiller Reads the New York Times.  Living on next to no resources
_ a small office on Lafayette Street in NYC and only a few paid
staff _ Paper Tiger has become one of America's premiere activist
video institutions.  Its tapes are used in media literacy classes,
it has a California branch called Paper Tiger Southwest, it has
been an "artist in residence" at the Wexner Centre for the Arts at
Ohio State University and it has been the subject of a number of
magazine and journal articles.  As videomaker Helen De Michiel
points out, Paper Tiger's "institutional status" is an essential
element in inspiring others to do activist access work.  "Simply
and effectively over the last decade (Paper Tiger has) created a
"wilderness preserve" for dissident viewpoints to be visualized,
constructed and aired.  As a consistent yet fluid group they are
continually extending to give "camcorder guerrillas" across the
country the courage and the resources (both psychic and material)
to create work that looks for the truth, finds it in unlikely
places and reframes it for reflection."

Although collectives like Paper Tiger and the Media Coalition for
Reproductive Rights are the most essential building blocks in
making the electronic commons model of access TV into a haven for
activist media making, their effect tends to be very localized.
This is a limitation both of the access channel itself _ it is
local entity often covering only part of a city _ and of the
limited energy and resources of small activist organizations.  In
1985, members of Paper Tiger and other video activists banded
together to overcome this limitation by creating Deep Dish TV, a
national satellite network foractivist video.  Deep Dish collects
activist tapes from producers all over America, puts them together
into themed packages and sends these up into space so that they
can downlinked by access channels all over the US.  This is the
kind of infrastructure _ outside the realm of any particular
access channel but using access channels as a foundation _ that
makes activist TV on a much larger scale possible.  "Without
infrastructures like the multi-generational, multi-practice,
extended "collectives" of Paper Tiger and Deep Dish and the other
visionaries who spend their time doing profound political work
which is media driven and about building our own systems of public
intervention and address ... without these, our silence will echo
through the next century if there is anyone left to hear the
echo."  Such infrastructures provide the organizing experience,
the people networks and the technical skills needed to develop a
broader social change media culture.

The advantage of insfrastructural foundations like those of Deep
Dish was clearly demonstrated during the Gulf War.  When the
possibility of a war against Iraq became apparent, members of
Paper Tiger, Deep Dish and other activist groups joined together
to produce a series of anti-war access shows under the name Gulf
Crisis TV Project (GCTV).  "Working with Deep Dish TV and its
nationwide network of public access stations and producers, GCTV
brought the alternative media movement together with anti-war
activists to provide a response to the massive media management
accompanying America's military build-up in the Gulf."  The Gulf
Crisis TV Project produced four half hour programs that were ready
for satellite distribution by the week that the war began.  The
programs were not only picked up by hundreds of access stations
across the US, but also by dozens of PBS stations, by Vision TV in
Canada and by Channel 4 in the UK.  The sale to Channel Four
funded an additional six episodes, including programs on anti-Arab
racism in US war propaganda, and the impact of the war on American
blacks and Hispanics. The speed of production and the number of
stations that picked up the Gulf Crisis show demonstrate the value
of activist run counter-cultural institutions that are built on
the foundations of the open access channel.

These examples of alternative media institutions and
infrastructures have developed in the US, where open access to the
community channel is fairly common.  It is much harder to build
autonomous activist institutions on the electronic commons in
Canada, as the electronic commons doesn't really exist.  I have
been trying to get around this problem for a few years now, and
would like to offer my experiences and the experiences of people
who I have worked with to suggest one possible route.

In the spring of 1992 _ a year after the Gulf War had ended _ I
went to New York City, camcorder in hand.  Although the purpose of
the trip was to attend the First International Conference for Auto
Free Cities, I spent some of my time interviewing members of Paper
Tiger and the Gulf Crisis TV Project about how they made activist
media.  A conversation about the nature of access television that
I had with Paper Tiger member Cathy Scott is of particular
interest in terms of my approach to activist TV in Canada.  During
our chat, I told Cathy that Canadians had no right of access to
the community channel, that "what gets on" is at the whim of the
cable company.  This astonished her, and she started saying things
like "that's ridiculous" and "you have to organize people to
change that" and "march on the government and make them give you
access".  Although these concerns were not new to me _ Kim
Goldberg had talked about the need for such changes two years
earlier in her book The Barefoot Channel _ Cathy's passion acted
as very helpful kick in the butt.  We needed to make some changes
in Canadian community TV.  The problem was, there didn't seem to
be the makings of a mass movement to revitalize and redemocratize
the community channel.  So, I started very close to home, by
trying to increase the access focus in the small community station
where I work in Parkdale, part of Toronto's working class
southwest end.

The changes that I pushed for were small, and given the commitment
to good community TV of the people who worked with and above me,
the resistance to ideas about access and social change was far
from overwhelming.  The first thing that I did was try to
re-emphasize the importance of access for underrepresented groups
in station policy _ both in the written rules and in practice.
The second thing was to try to change the equipment policies so
activist producers who wanted to get in and out quickly didn't
need to spend a year and half taking technical workshops.  The
third was to encourage groups who wanted to form collectives, to
create their own external institutions, to do so.  Although these
efforts have not changed the Canadian community channel as a
whole, they have contributed to Cable 10 Parkdale/Trinity being
called "...the radical fringe of (Canadian) access television."
They have also led to the production of hours upon hours of vital
activist television.

As we have seen with the American examples, the best way to make
activist community TV is to have good access policies in place and
then to create an external collective.  A number of such
collectives have developed in the Parkdale area.  Most of these
groups started out by putting in a proposal for a full year series
and then farming out episodes to their members.  One such
collective is SHE/tv.  SHE/tv is "...an alternative forum to
represent society from the perspectives of women."   With over 20
members, SHE/tv has developed into a strong activist institution
which has gained recognition in print and at video festivals.  The
collective shares technical and producing duties within its
membership, producing a half hour per month to air on the
community channel.  The work that they have produced includes
programs on gay and lesbian parenting, feminist transformational
moments, black women's health issues and gender roles within
grassroots organizations.

Another collective that has developed over the past two years in
the Parkdale area is Undercurrents, which produces a monthly
access forum open to people who want to deal with issues shut out
by the mainstream media.  Much more loosely knit and decentralized
than SHE/tv, Undercurrents still functions well as an activist TV
institution insofar as it is a voice for the idea of access and it
opens itself up to pretty much anyone with an idea.  The
Undercurrents series has included programs on alternative theories
about the cause of AIDS, anti-logging protests against MacMillan
Bloedel, various kinds of "guerrilla television", sustainable
transportation, and animal rights.  The access emphasis of the
community channel in Parkdale has also opened up space for the
environmental series This Island Earth,  an artists' television
series curated by the YYZ Artists' Outlet and a number of single
issue programs giving voice to commonly censored perspectives.

Of course there are examples of activist community TV in Toronto
that have not come out of the Parkdale studios.  A coalition of
artists and activists in Toronto got together in the early 1990's
to independently produce the Cable AIDS Project, series of
educational programs on AIDS produced for a variety of audiences
and communities.  The series aired on both Rogers Community 10
Toronto and Maclean Hunter Cable 10 Parkdale/Trinity.
Unfortunately, the series was pulled by Rogers after the screening
of Gita Saxena and Ian Rashid's Bolo Bolo, which depicted two men
kissing.  There are also many examples from outside of Toronto,
including a peace show in Winnipeg, an environmental program in
Kamloops, women's program in Campbell River, BC. and a cycling
show in Ottawa. Despite these examples, the dominant look and feel
of community television in Canada is dull and conservative, and
there is still no guarantee of access.

It is important to note that there is a great deal of activist
film and video work made outside the realm of community television
in both Canada and the US _ work that is committed to the
development of Gramscian counter-cultures.  The social change
spirit of the 1970's left us with a legacy of media arts and
artist access centres which provide equipment and a supportive
atmosphere for the production of experimental and marginal work.
Thousands of tapes come out of these centres each year.
Unfortunately, there is no effective distribution system for most
of this work outside of galleries.  This is especially the case in
Canada where there is a wide rift between community TV and artists
_ the bone of contention mainly being copyright and payment for
work.  There is also a good deal of social change work produced by
small activist groups who use home videotape as their distribution
method.  Canada's NFB produces a large number of social change
films and videos which _ in contrast to media arts and activist
productions _ are well circulated on film, tape and over
television.  And NFB units like the Native-run Studio One, women's
unit Studio D and the experimental interactive projects of Studio
G still stress grassroots production on various levels.
Unfortunately, the NFB is underfunded to the point that the
grassroots end of its production can only touch a small number of
people.

The breadth and volume of work that comes from media arts centres,
small activist organizations and the NFB, combined with all of the
social change programming that is produced for access channels
throughout North America, indicates that there is a definite
ferment and passion for activist TV.  The question is, where do we
take all these budding mini-institutions of the counter-culture?
How do we find ways to connect them, and in Canada to open a
bigger space for them?  First, remember that the Gramscian
counter-cultural institutions we are building depend on an open
space, a protected electronic commons, as their foundation.  And
then, with a grain of salt, pick up a copy of Wired magazine, or
sign on to your local Usenet news supplier, and see what people
are saying.  Much of the same rhetoric that was thrown out twenty
years ago about the community channel is circulating in them thar'
wired hills.  If there is a Jeffersonian video bus headed for
cyberspace, maybe activist television can hitch a ride.



5.  CYBERSPACE AND THE FUTURE OF ACTIVIST TV

There is a new age of corporate technological utopianism upon us.
It is emerging from all quarters in discussions about "the Net",
"the Superhighway" and cyberspace in general.  Along with this new
utopianism has come a fresh crop of people who skip the big-money
tech-talk and head straight for crucial questions of principle and
the models with which we should envision new systems of grassroots
communication.  These people are akin to the early community
access advocates, complete with an energy and fervor for putting
technology "into the hands of the people".  To listen to their
ramblings _ their words jumping from the Internet onto computer
screens across the planet _ one can only conclude that there is a
movement afoot.  And there will most likely be space for activist
television and Gramscian ideals within such a movement.

All of this new-found excitement has been spurred on by so-called
"convergence technologies".    The term convergence can be used to
describe something as simple as a CD-ROM, which combines
traditional print, video and sound styles into a single electronic
document.  But most of the hype around convergence  has come from
the idea of broadband, two-way networks _ or "information
superhighways" _ that could allow people both to send and to
receive video, print, voice and data using a single,
internationally connected system.   It is likely that the first
"highways" will be built by cable and telephone companies that add
fibre optic cables to their existing copper wire systems.

A growing movement of people who envision an electronic commons on
this "highway" is emerging mostly from the "virtual communities"
that exist on the Internet and on local bulletin board systems
(BBS's) and FreeNets.  The people who make up this movement have
experienced the kind of community feeling that can develop on a
multi-directional, uncensored communication system, and they want
to ensure that the new, broader-band networks include public
spaces that will allow this kind of community to continue.  In
talking about virtual communities, culture-jamming historian Mark
Dery writes:  "These burgeoning subcultures are driven not by the
desire for commodities but by the dream of community _ precisely
the sort of community that is lacking in the nationally-shared
experience of watching game shows, sitcoms, sportscasts, talk
shows, and, less and less, the evening news."

This passion for self-generated culture and community, and the
rejection of brainless corporate mass media, link the virtual
access advocates of the 1990's with the VTR toting community
channel activists of the early 1970's.  Similarities between these
two movements for grassroots banter _ which are separated by a
whole generation _ are astonishing.  In a 1973 Challenge for
Change newsletter article entitled "Cable Can _ And Will _ Deliver
More Than Just Programs", Gail Martin paints a vision of a
"two-way, international, on-demand information system" where
citizens create the content and are guaranteed a "right of
access".   Twenty years later _ in a 1993 Wired article subtitled
"The Case for a Jeffersonian Information Policy" _ Electronic
Frontier Foundation co-founder Mitch Kapor provides a similar
vision of international, "open systems" networks that would
stress: "Access ... everyone should be able to connect; Content
... users should be able to determine the content of the system;
Uses ... people should be able to choose the roles they wish to
play, whether as consumers, providers, or both."   Here in Canada,
people like FreeNet advocate Garth Graham are writing articles
that in many ways could have fit into the Challenge for Change
newsletter.  In his 1994 Traveler's Manifesto For The Electronic
Mindway, Graham argues that we should: "...ensure that the
development of a Canadian communications and information
infrastructure sustains  grassroots community networking as the
key to equity in the information age" and "...encourage universal
access to a new global conversation and universal participation in
shaping its content."  The bias of most of these new access
advocates is more towards the Jeffersonian electronic commons than
the Gramscian counter-culture.  But there are some who evision
activist projects on the new networks, and there is the
possibility for the flowering of these visions if a electronic
commons is created on the "highway".

The access advocates of the 70's and the 90's are also similar in
that they both stress systems model over technology and hardware.
Where the business-minded technological utopians of today often
imply that the right configuration of fibre optic cables and
digital switches is all that is needed to spark a positive social
transformation, access advocates argue that the way new systems
are designed and the way new institutions are created is of far
more importance.  Graham writes: "We need design metaphors of
wetware for the national dream, not hardware. [SIDEBAR --
"wetware" -- as opposed to hardware or software -- is that which
is human or living.  Our brains, and by extensions our thoughts,
are wetware.] Instead of a public policy debate on the defining
institutions of an information society, what we've got is a
technical discussion of the vehicle that will convey us into it,
and a market survey of our willingness to silently pay for the
trip."  The "grassroots wetware" we need for the electronic
commons will have to include visions of video and data that flows
not just to the home but also from the home, increased levels of
basic and computer literacy, and universal access to the new
networks.

Of course "grassroots wetware" can have many meanings and
interpretations that do not work in favor of the electronic
commons.  In fact, much of the grassroots social change rhetoric
that is floating around our mediascape is coming from the mouths
of information technology companies and others in the corporate
world.  For example, the Information Technology Association of
Canada (ITAC) has used grassroots-sounding techno-utopianism to
gloss over the role of information networks in fragmenting the
North American work force and driving down wages.   In ITAC's
January 26, 1994 paid supplement to the Globe & Mail _
Futurescape: Canada's Information Highway _ Canadians were
provided with a glimpse of the future.  In the photo-caption for
an article called "Technology's Labour Day", ITAC promised that
"...the superhighway will empower workers."   Towards the middle
of the same article, it is explained how the superhighway will
"empower" secretaries in particular: "Mississauga based Women of
the Workplace (WOW) divides secretaries into two groups: 'thinkers
and non-thinkers'.  Although information technology will allow the
few "thinkers" to become "producers...and more creative,"
non-thinkers will be "...eliminated from the office and channeled
into retail and restaurant jobs."   Such forms of "empowerment"
certainly fit in with the goals of certain strains of "corporate
broadband wetware".

More commonly, the corporate world uses grassroots and new age
sounding phrases to describe its dreams of the "consumer
information highway" model.  A prime example is Montreal-based
Videotron Ltee's "Universal, Bi-directional, Interactive" (UBI or
you-bee) system.  This "two-way" cable pilot project _ which will
be up and running in Quebec by 1995 _ has been touted as Canada's
first electronic highway.  According to the Videotron press kit,
UBI will allow users to download pay per view movies, download
pay-per-byte information from databases,  download advertising
flyers and multi-media catalogues and download pretty much
anything else.  But the users ability to upload _ to provide
content to the system _ is almost nil.  The two-way interactive
abilities of UBI will only allow users to upload their lottery
picks, their credit card numbers (for home shopping), the motions
of their joysticks during interactive video games and their choice
of camera angles during sporting events.  Videotron has stated
that they do not plan to add interactive capabilities to their
community channel at this point.

With the people who are building these networks talking about
systems that focus mainly on consumerism and control systems, many
access advocates like Victoria FreeNet board member Clyde Bion
Forrest are concerned that the new networks "...could become just
like television."   It is from this fear, and from their positive
experiences with the Internet, that access advocates describe the
kind of model we need to pursue if we want to build a new
electronic commons.  "There are two extreme choices. Users (of new
networks) may have indirect, or limited control over when, what,
why, and from whom they get information and to whom they send it.
That's the broadcast model today, and it seems to breed
consumerism, passivity, crassness, and mediocrity. Or, users may
have decentralized, distributed, direct control over when, what,
why, and with whom they exchange information. That's the Internet
model today, and it seems to breed critical thinking, activism,
democracy, and quality. We have an opportunity to choose now."  Of
course the choice really lies in the hands of corporations and
governments, but access advocates are lobbying hard to make sure
that the choice they make is the Internet model.

And there is certainly good reason to think that putting the
Internet model onto at least part of the new broadband networks
would make for an excellent electronic commons.  Experience has
shown that it is a model that works well in this role:  "...life
in cyberspace seems to be shaping up exactly like Thomas Jefferson
would have wanted: founded on the primacy of individual liberty
and a commitment to pluralism, diversity, and community."   The
Internet cyberspace that Kapor is talking about is a global system
of thousands of interconnected computer networks that offers a
totally uncensored, two-way information environment.  Mostly
limited to text, the Internet offers discussion areas and
databases covering every interest, idea and philosophy imaginable.
Within the discussion areas, anyone can post an opinion or an
article at any time, completely blurring the distinction between
information producers and information consumers.  The Internet has
also been, at least until recently, a vehemently non-commercial
community. As a working model of an electronic commons, the
Internet is in many ways doing better job of fulfilling the
original community channel dream than the community channel
itself.

But the community channel-like role of the Internet is certainly
limited by the same factors that have limited American electronic
commons model of access television, unable to produce social
change, activism or even equal access all on its own.  As Mark
Dery points out, the virtual communities on the Internet often
"...fall short of utopia _ women and people of colour are grossly
underrepresented, and those who cannot afford the price of
admission or who are alienated from the technology by their
cultural status are denied access."  As with the access channel,
it is essential to inject activism into the Internet model, and to
build Gramscian activist institutions on its soil.

Activists who are interested specifically in information rights
have risen to this challenge by addressing the problem of "the
price of admission" on the Internet.  Their main strategy has been
to develop FreeNets or Public Education Networks (PENs) in their
communities.  FreeNets and PENs are "community computing networks"
that provide free dial-up access for people with home computers
and free public terminals in libraries and community centres.  As
FreeNet pioneer Tom Grunder explains, community networks are about
developing a locally oriented system to solve local problems.  "I
believe that, if we enter this (information) age with equity at
all, it will be because of LOCAL people, building LOCAL systems,
to meet LOCAL needs.  That's YOU, building Free-Nets, in cities
and towns all over the country."  This emphasis on free and local
communications is very similar to that of the community channel,
but community computing offers a number of elements that the
community channel (especially in Canada) does not offer: a
censorship free space; a two-way, dialogue oriented system; and
free international connectivity through the Internet to supplement
local debate and share ideas on local solutions.  But a FreeNet is
only in a limited sense an "activist project".  It is not devoted
specifically to social change or even to increasing access for the
those who are denied access on the basis of literacy or cultural
position.  From and within the FreeNet need to come projects that
deal with gender, race, environmental and class issues and systems
that deal with literacy.

There are activists who are working to ensure groups which have
traditionally been shut of the technology loop -- such as women
and low-income communities -- are trained on and made to feel
comfortable with computer networks.  For example, the Canadian
Womens Networking Support Program is setting up systems that will
provide a foundation for electronic conferencing before and during
the United Nations 4th World Conference on Women to be held in
Beijing, China in 1995.  The program's initiatives include:
outreach and training that is specifically tailored to women's
needs; an on-line conference system for Canadian womens groups who
want to discuss issues before the conference; on-site technical
support in Beijing; systems that will allow conference
participants to easily and cheaply communicate with activists at
home; and a full-text database of documents relating to the
conference.  The organizers of the program are not only working to
set up these systems in Canada, but also they are trying to find
funding to ensure that women in the South have access to the same
systems.  This part of the initiative is aimed at breaking down
the dominance of the North in international information flows and
at encouraging South-South communication.

Other groups have taken a "community centre" approach to dealing
with cultural and literacy based access barriers.  One such
facility is New York City's Playing to Win computer centre _
located in the predominantly Black and Latino neighbourhood of
Harlem.  Five hundred local residents use the centre on a weekly
basis.  The centre offers them the ability to access and learn to
use a variety of computer systems that can be used for network
access, desktop publishing and word-processing.  Playing to Win's
Ramon Morales says that his centre is "...giving people the
opportunity to use technology, but use it in a collective way, to
use it in a way that people are working together collaboratively,
and using it as tools for self-empowerment."   Unlike isolated
home computing, the centre communal atmosphere often politicizes
users about information access issues.

In addition to projects like Playing to Win and the FreeNets,
which focus their activism on access issues, there are also a
massive number of counter-cultural "activist projects" that have
brought the Gramscian dimension of community media onto the
Internet commons itself.  There are dozens of mailing lists,
newsgroups and gopher sites dealing with feminism, race issues,
the environment, gay and lesbian issues, international development
and activism in general.   There was a great deal of activist
activity on the Internet during the Gulf War.  The war was a time
when "everybody and their dog" wanted to get onto the Internet and
associated networks, as they were the only place to find
information that had not been "cleared by the US military".  Once
on-line, activists were able to find information about Patriot
missiles causing damage to civilian areas, articles from
journalists who had been muzzled by their editors, and
descriptions of peace demonstrations that never made it to the 6
o'clock news.

Larger activist projects and social change institutions have also
started to form on the Internet.  One of the most notable is the
Association for Progressive Communication (APC).  The APC is a
coalition of Internet connected social change computer networks in
over 20 countries including Alternex in Brazil, Nicarao in
Nicaragua, Peacenet and Labornet in the US and Web in Canada.  The
networks provide a space specifically oriented towards information
provision and interpersonal networking for social change
activists.  They provide information and discussion areas on the
environment, human rights, gender issues, peace and other topics
of interest to people working for social change.  More established
APC members often help progressive groups in the South to develop
their own autonomous communications systems.  In a sense, the APC
is like the Deep Dish TV of the Internet, providing a safe and
comfortable space for activist communications.

With activist projects like this edging ever deeper into the Net,
it becomes more and more clear that the Internet model is one of
the best tools with which to rebuild the Jeffersonian foundations
that will allow a new wave of Gramscian counter-cultural media.
As we have seen with public access TV, an electronic commons model
like the Internet is an essential foundation to the development of
our own, autonomous activist media institutions.  The technology
needed to bring access TV and the Internet model together is
becoming available.  The fervor and passion for people-centred,
grassroots-created content is also blooming at a mile a minute.
Creating a new electronic commons that could serve projects like
activist video making is now just a matter of pulling a few things
together.  Well, maybe not just.



6.  STRATEGIES FOR A NEW ELECTRONIC COMMONS

It is very likely that the new broadband networks _ like cable in
the past _ will develop to serve the goals of consumerism.  But it
is important to remember that a grassroots movement was able to
carve out at least some form of electronic commons and some space
for Gramscian activist projects within the earlier commercial
cable jungle.  According to Frank Spiller, the most important
factor in getting the community channel embedded into Canada's
cable regulations was "...an intense public lobby, so large that
the CRTC could not ignore it."   A lobby of equal size, loudness
and intensity could certainly develop to ensure that an open
public space is available North America's "superhighways".  To
make this happen, those who want a new electronic commons have
three main tasks ahead of them:  the construction of a mass
movement built on alliances between diverse groups; the creation
of the human centred institutions _ both within and outside the
new network _ that will be necessary to sustain an egalitarian and
truly accessible infosphere; and an intervention into the
regulatory processes of the countries in which the new movement is
organized.

The language, myths and visions of a Jeffersonian electronic
commons _ the most crucial part of any movement _ have already
started to spread widely.  Where community video and the Challenge
for Change newsletter spread grassroots media philosophy in the
1970's, the Internet and Wired Magazine are doing the same today.
As something that people are already using and enjoying, the
Internet has incredible mythical power.  People are telling their
friends about the info-freedom that it brings.  They are also
making new friends and creating new virtual communities.  It is
unlikely that the people who are using the Internet would be
willing to either give up this way of communicating or see it
limited to text as broadband, multimedia networks develop.  This
kind of attachment to a way of communicating, to a way of being,
could be a powerful force in bringing people together to ensure
that the Internet model makes it to the broadband networks.  Also,
more commercial media outlets like Wired can play a significant
role in developing the myths of a new democratic information
landscape.  Amidst all of its hardware reviews and
techno-fetishism, Wired spouts the Jeffersonian ideals of an
electronic commons to over 100,000 readers.

While most of the myths and ideas that flow from cyberspace and
fill the pages of Wired take a Jeffersonian slant, there are also
many 1990's access advocates that embrace the Gramscian spirit of
Challenge for Change.  Paper Tiger's Staking A Claim In Cyberspace
program envisions an acivist electronic democracy that opens up
spaces for marginalized communities.  And activists who set up the
feminist, environmental and other social change listservs,
newsgroups and gophers on the Internet are definitely contributing
to an electronically networked community future.  These visions of
an activist, community-focused future must exist alongside _ not
instead of _ myths of a Jeffersonian common.

Some of organizations that could form the nucleus of such a
movement have already started to take shape.  In the US, the
Electronic Frontier Foundation and Computer Professionals for
Social Responsibility are organizing conferences, writing
articles, running listservs and lobbying government to ensure that
cyberspace is public space.  An organization called the Coalition
for Public Information has formed to pursue similar goals in
Canada.  On a more grassroots level, people are forming small
groups in towns and cities all over North America to build
FreeNets.  These groups are a movement in and of themselves.

One limitation of the organizations that have formed so far, is
that they are almost solely made up of people who already
understand or use The Net _ grassroots computer activists,
software designers and information professional like librarians.
The "already Net literate" bias of these groups is at this point a
major roadblock to the development of a movement for a new
electronic commons _ people with other backgrounds and experiences
need to be involved.  One important constituency that could be
brought into such a movement is the large number of people who
were initially involved in Challenge for Change and the early
community channel.  These are people who have both a passion for
"people's media" and a great deal of experience finding the human,
financial and political resources necessary to build an electronic
commons.  People who are currently producing non-computer
grassroots media also need to get connected into this movement.
Activist video makers, community radio producers, community
channel facilitators, artists, journalists and the independent
print media all have a stake in what the electronic commons looks
like.  They also have experience in their own fields that can be
added to the experiences of the computer people and information
providers who currently make up the membership of the
organizations listed above.

In order to attract these people to a new movement, discussion of
info-access issues should not be limited to high-tech forums like
the Internet, or to computer hip magazines like Wired.  The ideals
of the electronic commons and of visions of the social change
media institutions that we could build on such a commons need to
be distributed by computer, poster, pamphlet, TV show, radio
program, book and any other media that we can think of.  To
paraphrase interactive video artist Nancy Paterson: "Stay
multi-format.  Use video, use CD-ROM, use computer networks _ use
T-shirts.">

As a movement emerges, it is essential that it develop a
multiplicity of visions that concretely describe what a new public
access systems could look like _ a wish list, so to speak.  This
is Garth Graham's "wetware for a national dream".  In terms of the
actual design of broadband public access system, I personally
envision a multimedia FreeNet that would borrow from the
experience of both community television and current community
computer networks.  Community television in Canada provides the
perfect model for the funding of public communications projects.
The government makes the people who profit from information
distribution pay for a public system.  FreeNets offer an excellent
model for community-run, two-way communications systems where
everyone is a sender and receiver of information.  To combine
these two elements on a broadband network that carries video,
sound and all other media would make for an almost ideal
electronic commons.  As technology progressed, such multimedia
FreeNets would allow community members to put their videotapes, CD
ROMs, radio shows, etc. onto a community multi-media server.  Any
other community member would then be able download that
information into their home.

Although such a vision may sound far fetched compared to the
text-centric Internet, it is not an impossibility when you
consider the UBI system that Videotron is building.  As an
example, UBI will have computer servers using CD ROM or some
similar format allowing users to randomly access multi-media
consumer catalogues.  There is no reason that this technology
which is being put in place to sell things could not also be used
to serve the electronic commons.  Such a system might not be able
to handle complete community video on demand right from the
outset, although this would be the ultimate goal.  In the
meantime, grassroots multi-media and radio producers could use the
community interactive server while video makers would be given
additional channels with which to create a more open access space.
There would even be the possibility for a near on-demand community
video all request channel.   On cable systems which plan to use
most of their 500 channels to run the same Hollywood movies
starting at five minute intervals, freeing up the bandwidth for
additional video access channels is not too much to ask for.

Of course it is also essential to build support institutions for
the electronic commons outside of the network itself, especially
if we are to lay the foundations of activist projects and avoid
the failings of open access community television.  Such
institutions would provide basic and computer literacy training,
and access to the technology needed to use the electronic commons.
Centres like the Playing to Win computer access facility are a
step in this direction.  As a grander vision, I would like to
borrow the concept of the Centre for Appropriate Transportation
(CAT) from the alternative transportation movement.  CATs are
community centres for sustainable technology.  In the
transportation world, they include bike maintenance training
spaces, design studios for people working on human powered
transport projects and other facilities that contribute to the
development of a non-car culture.  For the new public access
networks, we could create our own CATs _ Centre's for Appropriate
Telecommunication _ that would provide free access to video
production equipment, desktop publishing systems, network
connected computers, multi-media authoring facilities, literacy
classes, technical advice and the like.  Such centres could be run
in association with the local multi-media FreeNet, using some of
the funding provided by the network owners.

The fruition of all of these visions will definitely be driven by
a great deal of human energy, co-operation and passion.  But this
human energy must go hand in hand with a regulatory environment
that supports the existence of a public space on the new networks.
Such regulations are necessary to ensure that network providers
like the cable and telephone companies are legally responsible for
funding a public space on their systems.  In order to get
regulations like this put into place, a movement for the creation
of public networks will have to identify key moments for
intervention into the regulatory process.

One such moment in Canada will be upon us in the next few years as
the CRTC deals with requests by the telephone companies to carry
video.  Telephone delivered video is often referred to as
"video-dialtone".  In the US, the FCC has already made major
rulings on video-dialtone, the most significant of which ensures
equal access to the system for third-party information suppliers
(i.e. people who are not the phone company).  It is important that
Canadian regulations guarantee the same sort of access if
independent film, video and multi-media makers are to develop a
market on the "highway".  It is even more important that
video-dialtone regulations in Canada follow in the footsteps of
the cable regulations that require the system owners to spend 5%
of revenue on some sort of public access system.  This funding is
essential both to build systems like the multi-media FreeNet and
to ensure that the cable companies are still required to provide
some sort of community channel.  If the phone companies don't have
to fund a public space on the multi-media networks that they are
developing, it is likely that the cable companies will be able to
get out of their community channel obligations in the name of
"fair competition".

The frenzy with which big cable companies are swallowing up
smaller ones in both Canada and the US provides another regulatory
area to watch.  In Canada, such transfers of ownership almost
always come with a "benefits package".  These packages include
goodies like updated equipment for community television and
independent film funds, which are intended to prove that the cable
company is doing something "in the interest of the Canadian
people".  Although benefit packages are usually designed by the
cable company in question, there is no reason that members of the
public cannot present the CRTC with requests for additions or
changes.  Such requests could include extra access channels, fiber
optic links between a media arts centre and the community channel
master control or special community channel projects in support of
marginalized communities.

On the sidelines of the regulatory process there are often
advisory councils or other such government bodies.  These are also
excellent places to plant the regulatory seeds of the new public
networks.  In Canada, the federal government has created an
Advisory Council on the Information Highway.  Although the
council's twenty-nine person membership is dominated by the cable
and telephone industries, it also includes the chair of the
Coalition for Public Information, the president of the National
Capital FreeNet and the president of the Inuit Tapirisat of
Canada.  These are all people who understand the need for
democratic communications and grassroots information systems.  It
is essential that they hear the opinions of and get support from
diverse sectors that support the idea of an electronic commons.
With alliances between a movement for democratic networks and the
people who work within bodies like the advisory council, and with
a clear understanding of when crucial decisions will be made,
there is a real possibility of inserting grassroots communications
values into the process of broadband network regulation.

As we take the crucial steps of developing a new movement, new
institutions, and new regulations that guarantee an electronic
commons, we should not fall into the trap of thinking that public
space on the new broadband networks is too much to ask for.  As
public access producer Fernando Moreena says in Paper Tiger's
Staking a Claim in Cyberspace: "If telephone companies and others
are going to be able to develop this electronic highway, then we
want electronic parks to go with it, just like any other
development.  We also want money to grow the grass, to keep the
trees and to be able to work with the community."  Leaving a space
for the public is a matter of course in the development of
housing, as it should be in the development of  new communications
networks.


It is also important to remember that a group of grassroots media
activists were faced with the same challenges _ building a
movement, visioning the future, creating regulations _ twenty
years ago.  Against great odds, they were able to build community
channels across North America.  Despite the problems that
community television faces, there is a great deal to be learned
from these earlier victories.

It is also important for activists who are concerned about our
mediascape to remember that the creation of an electronic commons
or public space on the new networks is not enough in itself.  We
need to turn back to the Gramscian vision of community television,
and look for the places where we can build counter-cultural
institutions on the new systems.  Looking for these spots is the
only way to create a real cultural shift, to create real openings
for anyone who wants to speak electronically, as opposed to
creating a play-thing for the middle class and the already
literate.

Finally, we must constantly remind ourselves what this whole
grassroots media thing is about _ human beings and community.  If
we all fall into our computers and stop talking to the people
around us, we are wasting our time.  If access to the new systems
does not include literacy and the demystification of technology,
we will have created a system that makes class barriers and
cultural exclusions bigger rather than smaller.  If we leave
people in the South to sit on the periphery of the Net, getting
sick as they build computers for the rich, the electronic commons
is a failure.  As we build a movement for a new electronic
commons, we need to remember the primacy of all these things, to
remember why we care about information democracy in the first
place.



Appendix One - WHAT IS A HEGEMONY ANYWAYS?

A "hegemony" is really nothing like a heffalump  In fact, it isn't
any kind of animal at all.  Rather, it is a state of being where
everything is in harmony, at least for those with a lot of money
and power.  More specifically, hegemony is taking one way of
seeing things, and convincing people that this way of seeing
things is natural, that it is "just the way things are".  This
"way of seeing things" in question is almost always in the
interests of people who are rich and powerful.  In other words,
ideas that support the rich and powerful usually define the way a
society sees the world.

In late 20th century North America, most of us see the world
through the eyes of consumerism.  The mass happiness of mass
consumption pretty much dominates our shared conceptions of the
way things are. [SIDEBAR -- Cultural hegemony refers to those
socially constructed ways of seeing and making sense of the world
around us that predominate in a given time and place.  In the
latter 20th century US the supremacy of commodity relations has
exercised a disproportionate influence over the way we see our
lives. (Goldman, pg. 2)]  This idea of hegemony _ a way of seeing
power in which "the war for mens' minds" is paramount _ will help
us understand how the corporate world has been able to disable
environmentalism.  But before we see how this happened, we should
take a closer look at the inner workings of hegemony.  One way to
get at these inner workings is to explore a single element of the
consumerist way of seeing the world.  The private automobile _
with all of the cultural and structural elements that support it _
is as good an example as any.

Most North Americans believe that the private automobile is the
only way to get around, and that it is definitely the best and
coolest way to get around.  In this way, it could be said that the
belief system which supports the automobile is hegemonic, it is
all encompassing.  Given all of the other ways of moving about
that are available _ walking, biking, bussing, boating, training _
this overwhelming support for cars as the only way is amazing.  It
is so amazing that it is hard to believe that it happened on its
own, that people just naturally love the car.  In reality, the
move towards a near universal acceptance of the car as the North
American way to get around required a great deal of work on the
part of big corporations and the people who help them sell ideas.
A number of structural, legal, and cultural shifts had to take
place before North Americans would joyously shout in unison _
"the car is the only way to get around, and we love it!".  The
most significant elements involved in driving this almost univocal
shout are: suburban road and shopping systems; the creation of a
government funded car-only infrastructure; the destruction of the
American public transit industry; the creation of Hollywood myths
around the car; the connection of our unfulfilled desires to
automobile ownership; and the linking of the car to fundamental
cultural values like freedom.

Let's start with suburban road and shopping systems.  Since the
1940's, North Americans have constructed their new cities in such
a way that people almost literally have no choice but to get
around by car. We have built suburbs where stores and houses that
are too far from each other to allow walking.  We have built
shopping places surrounded by seas of pavement, making it
impossible to stroll along and window shop like we did in our old
downtowns.  We have built streets so big and wide that we fear for
our children's lives if they aren't safely tucked inside our cars.
The easiest way to convince people of something is to make sure
they don't have any choices.   This is exactly what the suburbs
have done as a part of their contribution to the hegemony of car
culture, and the dominance of consumerism in general.  If it is
very difficult to get around without a car, people will quickly
come to the conclusion that the car is the only way to get around.


The governments of North America gave the suburbs a good deal of
help in convincing people to buy into this only way scenario.
Although there are many other examples, the two biggest
contributions that governments made to the development of a car
centred culture were road subsidies and centralized planning.
Federal, regional and municipal governments in North America
massively subsidized _ and continue to massively subsidize _ the
road system.  If they didn't do this, most people just couldn't
have afforded to drive their cars.  And that wouldn't have been
very good for business, would it? [SIDEBAR -- To find out more
about the subsidizing of car infrastructure, you should look at
the articles by Sue Zielinski , Gord Laird, Michael Replogle and
Charles Komanoff in the book Beyond the Car, by Steel Rail Press]
Once people could afford cars, planners were brought in to design
spaces that people could only get around by car (the suburbs).
This planning aspect of things represents a whole sub-belief
system contained within a profession.  By directly controlling the
ways in which certain aspects of society are organized, these
professional belief systems provide essential support for the
development of broader public conceptions of the way things are.

Of course the car corporations themselves had a big hand in the
development of the car centred belief system. They made and
advertised the cars that would fill the roads.  They also made
sure that there was no competition from more economically viable
and economically accessible forms of transportation.  "In 1936
General Motors, Standard Oil of California, and Firestone Tire
formed a company called National City Lines, whose purpose was to
buy up alternative transport systems all across the US., and then
close them down.  By 1956, over one hundred electric surface rail
systems in 45 cities, serving millions of people had bought up and
dismantled entirely."  With no buses or trains available, it was
much easier to convince potential suburban transit users that the
car was the only way.  National City Lines was a step in this
direction.

All of these structural motivations couldn't have convinced people
to believe so deeply in the car unless people really wanted the
car and the suburbs.  North America's cultural industries quickly
stepped in to help the want develop.  From the 1940s to the 1960s,
TV shows and movie screens were filled with glorious visions of
suburban life.  The suburban bliss of the Beaver Cleaver family
and the futuristic excitement of the Jetsons made the old
downtowns _ where you walked to the market and socialized on the
front porch _ look drab and boring.  These programs let people
know that progress, that ever illusive commodity lusted after by
every God-fearing American, was to be found in the car filled
suburbs.  And, if pulp TV and movie fiction wasn't enough, news
producers helped push "White Flight" to the suburbs by
constructing downtowns as hostile places filled with criminals and
minorities.  This muddling mixture of Hollywood fantasy and "real
world" news melded together to make the suburbs into "the place to
be".

Media makers not only helped people with the psychological leap to
the suburbs, they also helped to create some powerful, down home
myths about what the car could do for your life.  The American
film industry re-created the car as a provider of social and
sexual power. Hollywood-made home town America drag races from the
1950s _ where the winner always gets the girl _ are only the tip
of the iceberg.  Car advertising brought similar messages to
television.  Women draped on the front of slowly rotating
automobiles drew the ever stronger connection between cars and the
ability to get women.  These images of the car as a great thing,
as a way to get power and sex, filtered quickly into real and
everyday life.  The rites of passage that have developed around
the car are evidence of this.  Most North American teenagers just
can't wait to get their driver's license, the official proof of
adulthood.

This cultural link between the car and sexuality demonstrates how
the car centred belief system was built from the rubble of our
most valued life experiences and the mortar of our perceived
personal inadequecies.  Sexuality is one of the most vital and
exciting parts of our lives.  Unfortunately, the dominant messages
of our society and the day to day enforced morality of the 1950s
made a good job of quashing the sharing and beauty of sex.  If you
didn't have a horrible sex life already, the myth-makers did as
much as they could to convince you that you did.  As sexuality has
been broken down into something that we don't have, or can't have,
it has been easily sold back to us in the form of cars and other
consumer objects.  In other words, advertising and other forms of
popular culture have linked sexual fulfillment to the car as a way
to help us buy the car and love the car.  It is important to note
that the accelerating car culture of the 1950s focused on the car
only as the solution to male sexual needs.  In this way, the
sexualization of the car not only commercialized desire but also
it contributed to the post-war rebuilding of male dominance in
North American society.

Finally, the car was also brought into the hegemonic consumerist
belief system by the skillful application of words.  Certain words
hold immense power in a society, the power to sway people and
justify actions.  In North American society, one of these words is
"freedom".  Freedom has many meanings, and many connotations.  The
most overarching of these meanings play into the hands of
consumerism and the powers-that-be.  In our culture, "freedom" can
be used to conjure up ideas about the right to espouse any
political beliefs you like, the ability control your own body, or
the right to protection from oppressive economic and political
forces.  But more often than not, "freedom" is used to invoke
ideas about economic liberty in the marketplace _ the right to
make a buck or the right to buy the product you like, the "free"
market and the "free" press.  These more dominant uses of the word
freedom act as fundamental supports to consumerism.  In the case
of the car, freedom has been strongly linked to freedom from
parents, from the state, and the freedom to chose your favourite
model of car.  By making such strong links between the car and
freedom, culture-makers have helped to secure the car's position
as a "must have" product, and as a central element to our
obsession with mass consumption.

All of these things _ the suburbs, government road subsidies, the
destruction of public transit in the US, the creation of Hollywood
car myths, the appropriation of our desires, and the links between
the car and central values like freedom _ have contributed to the
creation of an almost all encompassing car loving belief system in
North America.  This belief system has been so successful, and is
so pervasively connected to concepts of personal power and fun,
that few North Americans would say that they don't like cars.  In
fact, they can't get enough of them.  This belief system is so
pervasive that the vision of the car as the only way to get around
seems natural, "just the way things are".  Massive support for the
car _ and in similar ways for consumerist beliefs in general _
amounts to a tacit public consent to the political and economic
system that makes mass consumption work.  This natural-seemingness
of a belief system and this broad consent for a economic and
political system are the elements that make up hegemony.  They
indicate a situation where the desires of the "general public" and
the money making schemes of big corporations are "in harmony".

Of course there will always be people who either don't participate
in the dominant way of doing things, or who downright oppose it.
In the case of the consumerist car culture,  there are definitely
people who choose to use the predominantly shut out modes of
transportation such as walking, biking, busing and training.
There are also people who come right out and say that cars should
be gotten rid of altogether and that we should all turn to other
options.  Although these people may be acting and talking in ways
that go counter to the dominant way of seeing things _ counter to
the hegemony _  the big car corporations don't bother with them
much.  Corporations are much more interested in keeping
consumerist myths rolling along than they are in talking to people
who think that the consumerist lifestyle is bunk.

Big corporations only start to worry about people who oppose them
when there is actually a threat to their ability to make a profit.
People can rant and scream and do their own thing all they want as
long as they don't interfere with profits.  But once you start
tampering with profits _ by convincing enough people that
consumerism is a bad thing or by directly standing in the way of
money making operations _ you have crossed an important threshold.
This is the threshold that stands between the powers-that-be being
nice to you, and being thrown in jail.  It is at this point that
the environmentalists re-enter the story.  As we saw earlier, the
spread of eco-ideas during the 1980s was seen as a threat by those
at the top of the consumerist power ladder.  Large numbers of
people started to question widely held beliefs that stood at the
foundation of consumerism.  Many North Americans started to
understand that using paper doesn't have to mean clearcutting our
forests and that getting around doesn't have to mean driving a
car.  This was a questioning of the dominant way of seeing the
world.

When the dominant ways of seeing the world start to be questioned,
the rich and powerful start to wonder how they can keep the
harmony of hegemony.  A situation like this is often called a
"crisis of hegemony". Such a crisis usually results in two actions
on the part of the powers-that-be.  The first is to undermine your
opponents by making sure that the "general public" gets real happy
again, real fast.  The second is to use force against the
"agitators" who won't get back in line, while convincing everybody
else in society that the "agitators" were just a bunch of
criminals anyway.  In the environmental "war for mens' minds", the
rich and powerful generally choose to use the undermining tactic
first.

************************************************** For a complete
version of this paper -- including pictures, sidebar commentary
and a full bibliography -- contact Mark Surman ([e-mail])

This paper is COPYRIGHT MARK SURMAN (1994).  Permission is granted
to duplicate, print or repost this paper as long as it is done on
a non-commercial (ie. keep it free)and as long as the whole paper
is kept intact.
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