Hacker Chronicles 2 (Alt)/The_Hacker_Chronicles_Volume_II-CD2.iso/cud5/cud529c.txt

Internet Message Format | 1995-01-03 | 9.7 KB

Date: 16 Apr 93 14:16:40 BST (Fri)
From: [e-mail]
Subject: File 3--LTES Article -- The author Responds

BACKGROUND: An article of mine was published in the Times  Higher
Education Supplement, a London-based weekly newspaper
largely for people working in UK universities, earlier this year.
It
was made possible partly by the generosity of net-people  with
their
comments and feedback; in return I mailed the text which  I had
submitted  to  people  who had  requested  it.  A  copy  was
incorporated in the CuD digest without my knowledge.
I make this clear purely as a legal caveat, because I am now in the
embarrassing position of having inadvertently breached  my own
copyright. Indeed, next week (Apr 22) I shall be sending  the THES
a
piece on the implications of electronic  publishing  for copyright
and
the ownership of intellectual property. Brief (1k?) comments  on
this
would be extremely  welcome.  Please  indicate whether  they may be
published with attribution, without, or  not at  all,  and  in the
first case give your full  name,  post  and institution/location.

     I am told that there were a large number of responses to  my
piece,  and that many took exception to my humorous quotation  of
the lite Xmas _Economist_ piece, which described the Internet  as
a "conspiracy" alongside the Masons, Opus Dei and such. The  only
responses  which  I  have actually seen  were  those  from  Larry
Landwehr and the response to this from Jim Thomas, who invited me
to respond.

The article itself:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I began drafting a net-style response to Larry, with quotes:
  > ...    just like in a conversation with a religious zealot, the
  > feminist dogma just had to surface ...

 -Oh  dear, I thought, reading this. The  "men-are-persecuted-
  by-feminists" dogma, so tediously common on the Net, just had  to
  surface.

This exercise in turn became tedious.

I am a freelance writer on science and technology, with a special
interest  in  the social and political implications  of  the  new
communications  technologies.  So  please bear in  mind  that  my
writing  is  quite  different  to  academic  writing  or  to  net
articles.  I  was asked to write specifically on  the  "invisible
college"  issue, and originally to do exactly 1500 words;  I  got
this extended to some 2300.

It is extremely interesting as a writer to compare the  responses
to  the printed article and to the electronic version: indeed,  I
destined to appear on paper, to keep the temperature down.

_If_  the net is an invisible college, who may it  exclude?  Last
year, for a quite different article in _New Scientist_, I counted
the  apparent geographical location and apparent gender  of  some
300  news-group  articles  (most  in  sci.*).  Some  97%  had  US
addresses  and  over 90% of those with  identifiable  given-names
were  male. Many fewer than 97% of all scientists work in the  US
and  fewer  than 90% are male; empirically, there's an  issue  to
investigate here.

I made it clear that this was not a scientific survey. Last week,
before  being  asked  for  these comments, I  was  working  up  a
proposal  for just such a survey: run the "From:" line  of  every
news-group  posting  for six months or a year past the  ISO  3166
country  codes  and past _Naming Baby_, and see what  falls  out.
Would  people  on  the net object to this?  Please  take  it  for
granted   that   I   understand   the   statistical   limits   on
interpretation  of the results. Please tell me if someone else  is
already doing this.

It is extremely interesting that Larry complains: "why is it that
every expert cited is a woman?" I count seven women quoted, seven
men, and two anonymous (one of whom I know to be male, and one of
whom is an _Economist_ journalist...).

In a 2300-word article, 500 words discussed possible reasons  for
the  under-representation of women on the net. All the  people  I
quoted  on this specific issue were women. I did what  I  usually
do  to find commentators: call busy people whose work I  respect,
selected  regardless  of anything except their work,  to  suggest
other researchers who will have time to comment. All those I came
across  working  on  the issue were, for some  reason,  women.  I
always welcome further contacts.

I  suggest  that  Larry's  complaint  points  to  a  "threshhold"
phenomenon   --   the  subject  of  an   extensive   sociological
literature. For example, when a neighbourhood is changing  racial
composition, up to about 5 black kids in a grade-school class  of
30  are fine; over 10 in 30, and the class is perceived as  being
"majority minority".

It  is plain daft that Larry calls on CuD not to  publish  pieces
such as mine. I am not, for the record, in favour of  censorship.
I did not call on anyone not to publish anything; and I've so far
resisted the temptation to publish on paper the proportion of net
resources  devoted  to distributing flesh-GIFs.  I  did  consider
Cheris  Kramerae's concerns about harassment worthy of  quotation
as one view among several.

My personal view is that "the calendar on the workshop wall" is a
form  of harassment, the effect of which is to contribute to  the
exclusion  of women from mechanical engineering and so  forth.  I
admit I should have made it clear that the "direct equivalent"  I
was  writing  about was leaving flesh-GIFs on  women  colleagues'
screens -- but I was already over-length and past deadline when I
realised I needed quotes to substantiate that it does happen. And
had I obtained those quotes, the tabloids might have run off with
the story... and then...

So,  in Larry's view, for me to quote women suggesting  that  the
under-representation  of  women on the net  might  possibly  have
something  to  do  with  puerile activities  here  is  to  invite
censorship; therefore he demands that my piece not be  published.
Shurely shome mishtake? (Sorry, Americans, that's a Brit journos'
catch-phrase.)

I appreciated Jim Thomas' thoughtful and tolerant reply to Larry.
Jim  clearly  has more patience than I can muster these  days.  I
regret that he and I have had to put effort into explaining  that
it  is  appropriate for articles to appear on the net  which  are
critical of some features of its current, and I hope  temporarily
aberrant,  state. I find it deeply ironic that we have had to  do
so  in  response to an article which so  vehemently  invokes  the
First Amendment.

If the net is, as Larry hopes, and as I hope, to expand "into the
mainstream of human culture", it will be forced to recognise that
there  are many cultures out there which are quite  different  to
the  various  cultures now reflected in here.

I'd like to conclude by provoking a new argument.

One issue which CuD readers in particular will have to face up to
is  this: the First Amendment concept of an _absolute_  right  to
freedom  of expression is, in my experience as a citizen  of  the
rest  of the world, grasped by very few people out here. Only  in
the  USA, that is, is there a widely-held belief that it's  worth
a  person's  effort to struggle for anyone's right  to  forms  of
expression which that person finds repugnant.

I  have  been  flamed before for asking  "why  is  stupid  speech
protected?":  this  frivolous question was a serious  attempt  to
raise the issue of protecting the _content_ of speech. I  repeat:
I  am not in favour of censorship. I have no personal  oracle  to
inform me what content is worthy of protection: the point is that
the  question  _makes_sense_  in  many  non-US  cultures,   where
relativism  is less rampant, where there is a residual  sense  of
community and of values (some of which I do find repugnant).

I  have heard reports that the US tobacco industry donates  large
amounts  of  money  to  the ACLU  to  promote  the  "pure"  First
Amendment  position. I have no reason to believe  these  reports,
but  their _existence_ and the fact that some clearly  give  them
credence  intrigues  me.  I live in a  country  where  the  Prime
Minister  is suing two magazines for libel because they  reported
and  thoughtfully analysed the existence of rumours that  he  had
had  an  extra-marital  relationship -- rumours  which  had  been
alluded to repeatedly in the daily press, so discreetly that many
uninformed  readers  will  have believed  that  there  were  two,
separate,  mini-scandals. If the Prime Minister succeeds  in  his
suit (and thereby closes the irritating magazines), the ACLU will
be  in  a position to sue me in the UK for libel over  the  first
sentence of this paragraph.

It is issues such as this -- the suppression of political comment
--  which the drafters of the Amendment clearly had in  mind  and
which exercises people out here. Few here really bother about the
free expression aspect of the Mappelthorpe (sp?) exhibition in DC
or the current attempt to suppress "adult" (i.e. puerile)  movies
beamed  into the UK by satellite. To be honest, no-one's  getting
very publicly worked up about the Prime Minister either.

And, to start another row:

(C)  M  Holderness 1993. By which I mean: I've spent  four  hours
writing this; writing is how I pay my rent. I reserve all  rights
to  sell any of these words for reproduction on paper or  in  any
other form; it may and will be freely distributed as an  Internet
article. My feminazi witch friends are cooking up a special  hell
for  anyone selling my efforts for personal gain: in  the  alpha-
test  Hades  you spend all eternity in an IRC  session  with  Dan
Quayle or Fidel Castro, whichever you detest the more.

M Holderness; [e-mail]; I speak only for myself.

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