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1994-06-04
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From: BTrosper@MHS.Novell.COM
Date: Thu, 26 May 1994 15:40:36 -0700
To: Multiple recipients of list <diac@cpsr.org>
Subject: NII is? was public involvement
X-Comment: DIAC 94 workshops, topics, final reports
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A good point has been raised about what the NII is and will be. The
point was made that the answer to THAT question will determine the
relevance of discussions about democracy, public involvement and what
not.
Another good question is whether NII is equivalent to the internet. Many
of us seem to have been operating on that assumption. On further
reflection, it seems I have been a bit naive.
Most people I know seem to ACT on information they receive by (in order)
1) Word of mouth
2) Television
3) Radio
4) Magazines/Tabloid newspapers
5) Newspapers
6) Miscellaneous sources
meaning that they consider the information from these sources more or
less reliable and important.
The supporting technologies for these sources form the de facto National
Information Infrastructure. These include :
1) Telephones, mail, face-to-face communication (my god - how
antiquated!)
2) Television receivers, VCRs, laser disks
3) Radio receivers (car and home)
4) Home delivery, newstands, supermarkets, petty theft - etc.
5) Same as 4)
6) Purchased books, libraries, Skywriting, billboards, hobo signs ....
All of these share a use of public resource as a medium for
communication. (If not readily apparent, 4) uses public streets, 5) uses
public spaces and so on..)
We have been proposing the addition of the internet backbone and
tributaries as another public space, that is, AS AN ADDITION TO THE
NATIONAL INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE, not necessarily a replacement.
We seem to be talking as if lack of guaranteed access to the new public
space will cripple an individual beyond all hope of repair. It is NOT
the only public space where data may be accessed. I submit that most
people learn to operate in a new space by word-of-mouth, not formal
instruction. There will be word-of-mouth on how to "work the internet".
If not, it would be a truly unique institution. Are the disadvantaged
denied access to telephones, VCRs, radios, newspapers etc. because they
have no guaranteed access to same? I think not.
So - where will the internet fit in? Is it additive, or a replacement? If
it is a replacement, do the same rules of access apply to it as the
original medium? If additive, what are the new rules?
To manage this new public space, we might think of it in this way...
1) E-mail seems to be a direct replacement for snail-mail as soon as
signature authentication is added, universal delivery is guaranteed, and
the current rules on send and receive as summarized in another posting
seem to apply.
Voice communication is coming, but the idea of store-and-forward voice
mail (remembering that audio is pretty much a stream-oriented means of
communication) on the scale of what I receive daily from various list
servers seems a horrible idea. The existing telephone network seems more
suited for voice communication. Phone rules are pretty much derived from
mail rules, anyway.
2) and 3) seem out of bandwidth for most people for interactive use, but
overnight downloads to a VCR or recordable CD seem reasonable. Outside
of straining capacity, this doesn't seem to be a problem - or much of a
new thing in the world.
4), 5) Distribution of the public prints is again pretty much of a direct
replacement. The added value to this kind of thing is some kind of
information filter. Information filtering services, except those
developed with public monies like Mosaic or Gopher, are pay for play.
Reading LARGE quantities of text on a video screen is a pain in the ...
eyes for me. Therefore, even though I can use the internet on-line for
4) and 5) I probably won't want to - I'd prefer some kind of subscription
thing that would print it all out overnight. That kind of access would
be good as far as accessing newspapers from all over the world, but not
so good for the trees. We need some kind of reusable paper!
Disappearing ink, perhaps? Note that quality will be extremely variable,
as it is now in the same kind of services.
6) Public advertisements on the internet seem to give everyone a quick
dose of the horrors - this seems to mix the notion of the net as
transport and the net as service beyond ready analysis. As has been
noted, the net neither knows or cares what bits are on it. What we fear
is an invasion of privacy, or an imposed fee for use through
advertisements. These are definitely issues of policy. I feel it should
cost advertisers the equivalent of television dollars to advertise on the
internet, AND ONLY IN THE CONTEXT OF SPONSORED SERVICES. That should
keep the proliferation down. This idea of sponsored services seems to be
one way to provide low-cost access to people who have time but not money.
If you can put up with 10 minutes of interruptions every half-hour, or
whatever it works out to be, you can spend 2/3 of your time doing real
stuff - forever.
The additive functions of the internet seem to me to be what you can't do
in a non-interactive medium. These include :
1) Batch searching for information across one or more virtual data spaces
2) Hypertext browsing across one or more virtual data spaces
3) GUIs which provide :
a) Context-sensitive visual cues
b) On-line help
c) all the usual cool stuff and whatever hasn't been thought of yet
4) Formation of virtual communities
5) Entertainment
6) Shopping
If these become valuable enought things, they will be demanded, accessed
and fought for by everyone. The point is that the public IS involved in
the National Information Infrastructure exactly as much as it wishes to
be NOW. That is, the primary means of communication are not controlled
democratically, but no one seems to care. Certainly the media is not
publicly owned. In fact, these questions arose often during the '60's (
does anyone remember the Free Speech Movement?). The questions seem to
be :
1) Does the public NEED a new kind of addition to the existing
infrastructure?
2) Does the public WANT a new public space paid for by the many, that MAY
only be used by the few, but COULD be used by the many?
3) Depending on 1) and 2), we can argue about cost and providers.
--bob