math%wri.com@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu (09/11/88)
From: math%wri.com@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu Subject: Mathematica Information...
math%wri.com@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu (09/11/88)
From: math%wri.com@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu Subject: Re: Mathematica Information... Stephen Wolfram has posted some up-to-date information about Mathematica for Macintoshes, Suns and other machines on comp.newprod. (Mail responses to math%wri.com@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu)
patth@dasys1.UUCP (Patt Haring) (09/13/88)
ENA NETWEAVER Volume 4, Number 7, Article 1 (July 1988)
Welcome to NETWEAVER!
The interactive, intersystem
newsletter of the
Electronic Networking Association
"Our purpose is to promote electronic networking in ways that
enrich individuals, enhance organizations, and build global
communities."
_______________________________________________________________
Volume 4, Number 7 July 1988
Copyright(c) by Electronic Networking Association (ENA), 1988
NETWEAVER may be freely ported to any online system.
Authors whose articles are published in NETWEAVER retain all
copyrights. Further publication in any media requires
permission of the author.
NETWEAVER is published electronically on Networking and
World Information (NWI), 333 East River Drive, East Hartford,
CT, 06108 (1-800-624-5916) using Participate (R) software from
Network Technologies International, Inc. (NETI), Ann Arbor, MI.
Managing Editor: Lisa Carlson
Contributing Editors: Mike Blaszczak
Robert Deward
Jill Herndon
Linda Nicholson
Stan Pokras
George Por
Tom Sherman
Philip Siddons
(Ms) Gail S. Thomas
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
NETWEAVER is available via NewsNet, the world's leading
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online. Read, Search or Scan all issues of NETWEAVER as TE55
in NewsNet's Telecommunications industry category. For access
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::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
We *welcome* anyone interested in joining the Netweaver staff!
The deadline for articles for the next issue is
the 15th of the month.
KUDOS to the "porters," unsung heroes of the Network Nation!
One of them has brought this issue to you.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Volume 4, Number 7 ---CONTENTS--- July 1988
1 Masthead and Index
2 ENA UPDATE ................................ by Lisa Carlson
New ENA projects are on the drawing board. Invitation to
GET INVOLVED!
3 TECHNOLOGICAL SALVATION AND ELECTRONIC NETWORKING
KEYNOTE ADDRESS to the ENA CONFERENCE Part I
by Robert Shayon
This veteran of an older technology - television - shares
insights about keeping the dream of a positive social role
for new technology alive.
4 TECHNOLOGICAL SALVATION AND ELECTRONIC NETWORKING
KEYNOTE ADDRESS to the ENA CONFERENCE Part II
.... by Robert Shayon
5 VIRTUAL ON VIRTUAL - A Review of Harvey Wheeler's
Virtual Book ...............................by Paul Levinson
This article reviews Harvey Wheeler's THE VIRTUAL SOCIETY,
presently available only on computer disk.
6 POTHOLES IN THE HIGHWAYS OF THE MIND
KEYNOTE ADDRESS to the ENA CONFERENCE Part I by Dave Hughes
According to this veteran networker, "There is nothing
predestined about whether the Information Age is going to be
a curse or a blessing. By themselves microchips and modems
are neither good nor evil. Only the acts of individual and
collective man that will make them so."
7 POTHOLES IN THE HIGHWAYS OF THE MIND
KEYNOTE ADDRESS to the ENA CONFERENCE Part II by Dave Hughes
2 (of 8) LISA CARLSON July 3, 1988 at 14:29 Eastern (4528 characters)
ENA NETWEAVER Volume 4, Number 7, Article 2 (July 1988)
ENA UPDATE
by Lisa Carlson
At the f-t-f ENA meeting in Philadelphia, we collected lots of
ideas for activities and a number of working groups were formed.
We will be continuing our work on these projects in the next year
and would love to have YOUR energy and expertise involved!
Contact Nan Hanahue, our ENA Membership Coordinator,
to find out how *you* can join and participate! (215) 821-7777
Here is a sampling of the project proposals submitted in
Philadelphia:
NETWORKING FORUM '89 IN JAPAN
=============================
We are seriously considering to organize an international
conference of Networking next year (in April or May) in Japan.
We hope ENA will play a major role in preparing and organizing
and making this happen. We need *core* people who will be part of
our team.
- Izumi Aizu
GLOBAL NETWORKING CLEARINGHOUSE
===============================
We want to pool our ideas, info, experience in global networking
to help ourselves and others do it better, cheaper, quicker.
Within our members and their friends we have so much already
including:
* cooperation for various global-oriented systems
* global activities
* globally-oriented conference e.g. Japan conf!!!
- Jeffrey Shapard
NETSPERANTO
===========
Let's start talking "netsperanto" including the concept of user
interface, interconnectivity of cc network commands, prompts,
structure, etc. from the USER's side.
- Hiro Nakamura
ENA TO SPONSOR ONLINE CONFERENCE PROMOTING COLLABORATION BETWEEN
BUSINESS AND CITIZEN COMMUNICATIONS DEVELOPMENT
================================================================
Many ENA members from business and citizen advocacy areas of
electronic communications will be joining in a public
multi-system 'parallel' conference. This conference will explore
common ground and help form collaborations of mutual benefit
between what often seem to be divergent visions of the future of
interactive telecommunications.
- Kevin Axelson
NEXT ENA CONFERENCE BEING PLANNED
=================================
The ENA meeting in Philadelphia announced that planning will
begin for its NEXT f-t-f conference. The tentative theme
"Groupware - The Next Wave - Computer Facilitated Work for Groups
and Organizations" was suggested. A conference location of
Allentown, PA - the town made famous by the singer, Billy Joel -
is being explored. There's also interest in having the conference
in California.
- Ed Yarrish
AD HOC COMMITTEE TO EXPLORE STANDARDS FOR DISTRIBUTED
CONFERENCING
==================================================================
Representatives of Caucus, Cosy, and Participate are planning an
online conference to design a set of standards for distributed
conferencing BETWEEN all these systems. EIES, Confer, and GENie
have also expressed interest.
- Charles Roth (Caucus), Margaret Ellis (Cosy),
George Reinhart (Participate)
NETWORKING ALLIANCE PROPOSED: BRINGING TWO INDUSTRIES TOGETHER
==============================================================
Purpose: To develop cooperative marketing approaches between the
electronic data and people networking industries.
Approach: Use the skills and technologies of computer
conferencing to better inform lay managers on the benefits of
electronic data networking technologies.
Step 1: ENA members will attend Enterprise Networking Event '88,
a major data networking trade show, to evaluate the marketing
communications of the data networking industry.
- Skip Conover
PUBLISH NETWEAVER IN PRINT FOR WIDER DISSEMINATION OF NEWS ABOUT
THE MEDIUM
================================================================
* conference report
* "best of" Netweaver
* Netweaver on disk
* explore porting of Netweaver via Dasnet
- Stan Pokras
PROVISIONAL ACADEMIC WING
=========================
Form a group focused on educational applications of electronic
networks.
- Dwight Stewart
HYPERMEDIA SIG FORMED
=====================
Explore relationship of electronic networking to advances in
hypermedia.
- George Por
* * *
In this issue of NETWEAVER you can read the Keynote Addresses
made to the ENA Conference in Philadelphia by Robert Lewis Shayon
and Dave Hughes. You can also find out about a new "virtual
book" available electronically.
ENA is full of energy coming out of the May conference. Now is
a great time for *you* to get involved!
3 (of 8) LISA CARLSON July 3, 1988 at 14:31 Eastern (8270 characters)
ENA NETWEAVER Volume 4, Number 7, Article 3 (July 1988)
TECHNOLOGICAL SALVATION AND ELECTRONIC NETWORKING
Keynote Address to the ENA Conference - May, 1988
Part I
by Robert Lewis Shayon
In the 1950s Lisa Carlson's family and mine were neighbors on
Meeker Road in Westport, Connecticut. Lisa and my daughter,
Diana, were schoolmates. In a letter inviting me to speak this
morning at this conference, Lisa recalled that she saw her first
color television on a set in my living room. I wrote a book in
1951, TELEVISION AND OUR CHILDREN, and I dedicated it "To my
daughter, Diana, and the companion legions of her generation:
the challenge will be theirs, too."
Well, time has surprises for parental expectations. Now my
daughter, Diana, and Lisa are grown up. I doubt if either of
them are much concerned with television's challenge. In the
so-called advanced nations of the world the computer has
replaced the television set as the prime object of public
attention. Diana is president of her own company and is a
strategic planning consultant to major corporations. Her firm
counsels clients on computer hardware and software; and Lisa is
one of the organizers of this conference and a leader in
computer conferencing. My daughter travels on planes with a
portable computer on her lap, and Lisa talks about "people and
organizations at work in a global economy." My seven-year-old
granddaughter has an Apple computer in her bedroom. Would
anyone venture to guess what new technology will pre-occupy her
attention twenty years from now?
Of one thing we can be certain: the pace of change is speeding
up. My grand-daughter will be confronting the new technologies
of her generation sooner than it took her mother to move from
color television in the living room to lap-top computers on
planes. And it's your generation, the people in this electronic
conferencing meeting who stands between the past and that
unknown future. Electronic networking is your thing, the thing
that you must do at this historical moment. You are the actors
at center stage, and it is how you will play your roles that may
affect the outcome: so for a brief beginning I will play my
role; I will do what Lisa Carlson asked me to do, give you a
glimpse of the past when old telecommunications technologies
were new.
Television today is very big business: that statement will
surprise no one in this audience. It is the cultural arm of the
industrial system. It is profit oriented and market targeted.
It is centralized, massified, controlled from the top down. It
is one-way, non-participatory communication dedicated to what
J.K. Galbraith, the noted economist, has called "the art of
bamboozlement." Its object is the cultivated sale of audiences
to advertisers, people in the guise of consumers and not
citizens.
It was not always entirely so. Congress opted in 1934, when it
passed the Communications Act, for broadcasting as a business,
but it expressly added that it was a business "affected with the
public interest." Even some of the executives who controlled
television in its early days believed their rhetoric, when they
talked of making TV "a mature instrument for the public good."
Pat Weaver, Vice President in charge of television for NBC in
1952 articulated a policy of "enlightenment through exposure."
"The purpose, in short, of the communications media that reach
the all-family audience from coast-to-coast is the general
self-realization of the public through exposure and
enlightenment -- not the special education of minor groups with
limited interests." But then came the 1970s when deregulation
fever set in.
Cable television followed with its promise of utopia for "minor
groups with limited interests." The band-width capacity of a
wired system seemed an answer to one-way centralized control of
television. Cable promised diversity, access to the system for
viewers to have input in programming. It was to be
decentralized, with town meetings of the air, with electronic
polling, with a variety of home services. The airwaves would
crackle, envisioned the cablecasters, with two-way dialogue,
with genuine political discourse. It was to be a wired,
democratic nation with the citizen once again in the driver's
seat.
Well the nation is half-wired today and where is the citizen
participation, where is the genuine diversity of programming and
political viewpoints? We have a proliferation of channels but
the same old programming with some marginal differences and
certainly no decentralized communications.
Now while mergers among the cable system operators centralize
more power in a few great conglomerations of control, we stand
at the threshold of computer networking, and we share the
excitement of a new technology. Once again we talk of
decentralized communications, of dialogue and conferencing, of
participation, based not only on a regional or national basis
but with the expected coming of ISDN, conceived in terms of a
"global economy." With modems and telephone lines at reasonable
costs, we can reach out and connect with vast data bases, with
people who think as we do and have common goals, we can have
communications power, as workers in corporations, as members of
special interest groups, and above all as citizens.
This is the mood in which this conference begins. It is
exhilarating and exciting and I wish you the best. Perhaps I
can be of most help if I examine with you past patterns of
telecommunications which might guide us in the development of
this new technology of electronic networking. James Carey, a
communications scholar, has written eloquently about the "myth
of the technological sublime." It began in Europe, he tells us,
before Columbus discovered America. The continent's virgin
wilderness was to be the scene of a new Eden, the machines of
the industrial revolution were to be transplanted to this
garden, which was to be exempt from the factory system in
Europe, with its "grime, desolation, poverty, injustice and
class struggle."
The machine in the garden did not produce the expected Utopia.
But then came the steam engine with its capacity to link the
continent with railroads and boats to create new commercial
bonds. Once more the rhetoric of salvation gushed forth in a
typical passage from an address of the period: "An agent was at
hand," said the speaker, "to bring everything into harmonious
cooperation ... triumphing over space and time ... to subdue
prejudice and to unite every part of our land in rapid and
friendly communication; and that great motive agent was steam."
Well, the railroads were built and the land united; but then
came the Civil War, and in its aftermath American cities were
turned into industrial slums, "class and race warfare were
everyday features of life," according to Carey. There were
depressions, the scarring of the countryside by coal and iron
mining and the devastation of the forests. But the myth of the
technological sublime still lived, only now it was turned from
the machine to electricity. Electric power was the new god. It
promised, so it seemed, "the same freedom, decentralization,
ecological harmony and democratic community that had hitherto
been guaranteed but left undelivered by mechanization."
It was the time of Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell.
Public electric power and community planning were united to
launch a "great power crusade" to integrate the new technology
with conservation and democratic localism. Governor Pinchot of
Pennsylvania, sounded the keynote for the power crusade:
"Steam,"
said the Governor, "brought about the centralization of
industry, a decline in country life, the decay of many small
communities, and the weakening of family ties. Giant Power may
bring about the decentralization of industry, the restoration of
family ... If we control it, instead of permitting it to control
us, the coming electrical development will form the basis of a
civilization happier, freer, and fuller of opportunity than the
world has ever known..." But the real beneficiaries of the
rhetoric of the electronic sublime were the electric light and
power companies who presided over the new technologies.
[continued]
4 (of 8) LISA CARLSON July 3, 1988 at 14:33 Eastern (8678 characters)
ENA NETWEAVER Volume 4, Number 7, Article 4 (July 1988)
TECHNOLOGICAL SALVATION AND ELECTRONIC NETWORKING
Keynote Address to the ENA Conference - May, 1988
Part II
by Robert Lewis Shayon
In our own time, radio, television and cable have perpetuated
the myth of the electronic sublime. Large audiences receive but
are unable to make direct response or participate otherwise in
vigorous discussion. But the myth persists and has taken on new
vitality with the arrival of computers.
Here are some quotes by authors who have written about computers
and networks. "With powerful personal computers, transformation
and salvation are all to be carried out." "Computer-based
communications can be used to make human lives richer and freer,
by enabling persons to have access to vast stores of
information, other "human resources," and opportunities for work
and socializing on a more flexible, cheaper and convenient basis
than ever before." "The information revolution is bringing with
it a key that may open the door to a new era of involvement and
participation."
Now what is the object of this very brief history lesson in the
myth of the technological sublime? You're probably leaping
ahead of me and saying to yourselves: "He's warning us that
we're headed for the same disillusionment as those enthusiasts
who have gone before us. BUT WHAT HE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND IS THAT
WE'RE DIFFERENT! This time we really have control. This time
we can interact with each other. This time there's a real
chance for many-sided communication, for exchange of views, for
sharing of decision-making, for arrival at democratic consensus.
Perhaps. I hope you can do it. I'm not a technological
pessimist nor a neo-Luddite. There have been such in past times
and there are many who look with deep suspicion at computers and
the alleged Information Age. But you can't succeed where others
have failed without knowing, without being aware of the forces
arrayed against you.
Power, the status quo, the centralization of trans-national
corporations, the government which is allied to those
corporations, and the social context in which
self-aggrandizement and the profit motive are bred into each and
every one of us from the cradle to the grave. Many of you are
associated with major corporations, which often encourage the
rhetoric of electronic conferencing in order to sell hardware
and software.
In one such corporation, there was an initial enthusiasm for
network-conferencing with employees around the world. A chief
executive officer started his own network. He asked for input
on company policy from distant employees. He got it. There
were forty or so tied into the network, and they poured out
suggestions. Gradually the executive lost interest. He hadn't
anticipated so much democratic discussion. He couldn't handle
it. He felt threatened. Gradually he withdrew. The
conferencing continues but it has lost all semblance of real
input into policy-making. Discussion may be decentralized but
power is centralized.
The computer industry faces a paradox. On the one hand they
seek to enlarge the market for the sale of products: but as the
market enlarges and more and more people seek access to
democratic policy-making, to social change, the more the power
structure is threatened. Power will seek to maintain control.
One way to do that is surveillance. Every message sent, every
digitized code put into the system, is capable of being stored,
retrieved, and used to curtail the privacy and political liberty
of the senders. They may back off and declare: "I don't want
to get involved." This has a chilling effect on the willingness
of people to advance dissenting ideas.
Political liberty is only one half of democracy; the other half
is economic equality: and that may be adversely affected by the
promised decentralization or segmentation of the market. This
may lead to social stratification or a widening of the gap
between the information rich and the information poor.
ClusterPlus (sm) is a system developed by Donnelly Marketing
Information Services and Simmons Market Research Bureau. It
divides the mass market into 47 distinct life-style clusters.
There is a cluster for Top Income, Well Educated, Professionals,
Prestige Homes, and another cluster for Poorly Educated,
Unskilled, Rural, Southern Blacks. Another cluster is called
"Dixie-Style Tenements," residents of lowest-class city
neighborhoods, mixed Black and Hispanic, families and singles
with some high-school education and very low socioeconomic
status. There is also a cluster called Blue Blood Estates, a
suburban community consisting of the highest-class,
predominantly white-college graduates with families.
The significance of this clustering of classes or castes, if you
will, could dry up the very outreach of people to people in
electronic networking. The networkers, computer literate and
economically privileges, could become "electronic elites"
talking only among themselves.
Used for commercial marketing, people in such clusters could
identify themselves with such peer groups and reinforce the
drift to a permanent underclass in our nation, without history,
without hope. Electronic networkers seeking social change
should consider another obstacle they would face, the unequal
balance with large government agencies. Personal computers
conferencing with each other are no match for the computers of
the U.S. National Security Agency. In short, technology is no
substitute for politics in bringing about social change.
Langdon Winner, of the University of California at Santa Cruz
has written: "Information in data banks does not replace
understanding, enlightenment, timeless wisdom or the content of
the well-educated mind."
If electronic networking is to contribute to a more humane
society, it must keep those values uppermost in mind. On-line
and off, don't forget that reflection, debate and public choice
are rare opportunities in our nation. These are best done by
face-to-face contact. Decentralization will not be accomplished
without reference to content or to the facilities over which
content is transmitted. Control of content must be kept
separate from transmission facilities or the right to freedom of
speech and press under our First Amendment may be abridged.
A New York Times news report from Washington, D.C. today (May
12, 1988, p. 20) is relevant in this connection. Here are
excerpts from that news story:
Technological advances may eventually dictate that a
single entity provide cable television services
nation-wide. The President of the nation's largest
cable system operator ... John Malone of
Telecommunications Inc., told the House
Telecommunications Subcommittee that "a super-monopoly"
might be the most efficient way to serve viewers ...
New technologies like fibre-optic cable, are much more
efficient than co-axial cable, at transmitting images,
he said, but only but only a regulated network ... The
super-monopoly might take the form of a joint venture
between cable companies and telephone companies, a
spokesman for the National Cable Television Association
said.
The Times report ends with the statement that
Telecommunications, Inc., has expressed interest in the
telephone business, and its holdings include movie theatres,
satellite dish systems and other things.
It is significant that "other things" include cable programming
networks and minority interests in broadcasting stations. Cable
systems control content and telephone companies control
transmission. To merge the two in a "super-monopoly" would mean
the retention of all entry into the providing of content, the
control of content and the cost of content. Such a merger
constitutes a major threat to freedom of speech and press.
Like the Ancient Mariner at the Wedding in Coloridge's poem,
"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," I fear I keep you too long
from the wedding feast. Perhaps a few may remember from your
high-school days, that the Ancient Mariner stopped the wedding
guest on his way to the feast and kept him with his glittering
eye, while he told him a strange and terrible tale, which left
the wedding guest more solemn and sober. You are on your way to
the feast provided by Lisa Carlson and her associates. Enjoy
it, but remember also that for my grand-daughter, seven years
old a week ago, you are the keepers of the flame.
------
author's note: Robert Lewis Shayon is Professor of
Communications at The Annenberg School of Communications,
University of Pennsylvania.
5 (of 8) LISA CARLSON July 3, 1988 at 14:35 Eastern (10934 characters)
ENA NETWEAVER Volume 4, Number 7, Article 5 (July 1988)
VIRTUAL ON VIRTUAL:
A Virtual Review of Harvey Wheeler's Virtual Book
on THE VIRTUAL SOCIETY
by Paul Levinson
Tons of paper have conveyed text seeking to explain the impact
of computer processing and transmission of text on the human
intellect and society. Few if any of these reams have related
what the computer does to the thousands of years of text
manipulation and communication fostered by earlier media -- few
have adequately placed the computer revolution in the context of
history.
What is needed are Marshall McLuhans for the computer
age, thinkers whose sense of the present and future is imbued
with a grasp of the great legacy of communicative history, whose
assessment of where we are going is thus illuminated by analogy
drawn from throughout the ages. Harvey Wheeler's THE VIRTUAL
SOCIETY, presently available only on computer disk, begins to
make such an accounting of present and future text forms and the
past.
First let's clarify what Wheeler and the yet small band of
e-text (=electronic text) practitioners -- including myself --
mean when they speak of "virtual" this or that. A traditional
university, library, restaurant, society consists of both
physical structures (the building, the books, the tables and
chairs, etc.) and informational structures that bring the
physical structures to life (the classes taught in the
university, the words in the books, the talk of people in the
restaurant, etc.)
One of the most interesting facets of the
physical structure/information structure relationship -- or
hardware/software relationship, to use the parlance of media
theory -- is that the information or software can be separated
from its original physical structure, and transplanted into a
new one. A book that carefully details what goes on in a
classroom or restaurant in effect does this. But the
transplantation of information into a printed book freezes the
information or renders the information incapable of further
change in that book structure.
The marvel of electronic structures is that their receipt and
conveyance of information permits an infinite change of that
information. Knowledge or information structures transplanted
into electronic fora thus have the capacity to breathe -- they
are "fungible," as Wheeler puts it -- and this makes them
serious alternatives to the original in-person physical
environments. The class conducted on-line through exchange of
ideas via electronically written and transmitted text is no less
alive than the class conducted on-line, and these "virtual"
classes and "virtual" libraries (texts available in electronic
form, readable anywhere in the world, by any number of people at
the same time) are the subject of Wheeler's inquiry.
Nor is this education anything like the traditional
correspondence school -- students and faculty interact with each
other on-line, and the community that develops electronically is
every bit as strong as that which may develop in in-person
settings. In addition to teaching on-line, Wheeler has been
instrumental in developing a virtual library at the University
of Southern California (the publisher of his disk-book: or
virtual book).
Wheeler begins with an evocative sketch of the shaman's
communication ritual -- reminding us that from shaman to
computer search, we are all of us engaged in essentially the
same activity. He moves on to describe the development of
libraries and then libraries of books in ancient and medieval
times, noting that we must take care not to get mesmerized by
the literal physical features of the libraries and books (the
hardware), but instead should strive to see and understand the
communicative function behind, within, and in front of these.
Wheeler sees the core of this function as "archiving" --
bearing witness to the life of society -- and allows that the
out-of-favor word "progress" may apply to the development of the
archiving function throughout the past and recently courtesy of
computers. (For me, use of the word "progress" is like pushing
an open door: I have no problem with seeing progress in nearly
all things technological, except nuclear weapons. See my
recently published MIND AT LARGE: KNOWING IN THE TECHNOLOGICAL
AGE for more.)
Wheeler appreciates what McLuhan and students of the media have
long stressed: that introduction to a new communications
technology is never a casual encounter or a one-night stand; the
relationship with the new means of communication is a rather a
total love affair that eventually pervades every aspect of
society and continues for centuries. He sees three significant
revolutions in communications-human societies prior to the
computer.
First was the development of the capacity to name and
count -- capacities dependent upon spoken language and primitive
writing (scratching), capacities which as Alexander Marshack
points out make us fully human. Second was the consolidation of
human knowledge in philosophy -- first typified by Plato, the
shift to alphabetic writing in his time, and the consequent
externalization and transformation of dialogue. Next came the
encyclopedic, physically transportable but nonetheless
cumbersome edifices of knowledge made possible by the printing
press.
Wheeler associates Bacon with this age, which we still
by and large live in today. Yet those of you reading this on
paper should know that a fourth age is well underway: what
Wheeler calls the Boolean age of electronically manipulable
text. Whether this is most properly associated with Boole,
Babbage, or even Turing is not as important as the fact that the
age is coming upon us.
Printed books, encyclopedias, and physical libraries lead as
naturally to traditional (what I called "place-based")
universities as the elevator makes possible and encourages the
rise of the skyscraper. (Indeed, as I point out in Mind at
Large, printed books directly stimulated the rise of public
education by creating a pressing need -- if you'll excuse the
term -- to learn how to read. After all, what good is the
harvest of books that flows from the press if one cannot read
them?) Wheeler thus wonders what sort of university the
Boolean world will bring into being?
We already know that the view that computer mediated
communication is in some sense flattening or less than human is
entirely wrong. To the contrary, as Justine De Lacy makes clear
in her essay about the French minitel system ("The Sexy
Computer," The Atlantic, July 1987; see also Lindsay van Gelder,
"The Strange Case of the Electronic Lover," MS., October 1985),
humans communicating through (not to) computers develop deep
friendships, have explicit sexual-textual exchanges, and even
have been known to fall in love. So the question is not one of
affect or no affect, but of what kind of affect comes with the
on-line experience.
The main thrust of Wheeler's inquiry is what the on-line
environment does to pedagogy and intellectual expression. We
have seen in Connect Ed classes that the "asynchronous"
environment -- person "A" writes a comment at 6:00 PM
Monday, person B reads it at 8:00 PM, person C read it at 9:00
PM and immediately responds, person B then reads person C's
comment, person B signs on the next day and responds to comments
by A and B, person A then reads what C and B have said, etc. --
leads to very rich and productive intellectual exchanges.
The key apparently is that people work best when they can choose
when to work and participate: unlike the in-person class, in
which any number of participants (including the faculty) can be
"out of it" at any given meeting, the on-line campus is likely
to get people participating at their best (for they choose --
within certain limits -- when to participate). Further, the
capacity of the on-line community to literally reach all over
the world -- to anyone with a computer and modem -- makes
McLuhan's metaphorical global village a literal reality, and
this too engenders a very fertile intellectual climate.
Still, Wheeler is correct that most of the differences in
on-line and in-person environments have yet to be fully mapped,
and this is even more so the case for the consequences. This is
why books such as Wheeler's -- and more statistical studies such
as Roxanne Hiltz's Virtual Classroom -- are so important.
The balance of this remarkable probe is devoted to the impact of
electronic text on libraries and publishing -- activities that
Wheeler astutely sees as becoming part and parcel of teaching,
literally indistinguishable from the university, in an
electronic context. Whether in virtual classroom or
"infinite article" or "fungible journal" (Wheeler's terms), the
on-line text is at once and always criticizable, revisable, and
thus ideally suited to what Karl Popper sees as crucial to the
growth of knowledge. Further, this "third hemisphere" of the
brain must have impact on the brains and people who utilize
it -- unlike the book, the flexible, open-to-group input on-line
text becomes an active, living partner of our intellects.
Hooked into the humanly-produced electronic infinite, our minds
become "turbominds," with consequences likely far more
accelerating to the growth of knowledge than those deriving from
the printing press -- aptly termed "gunpowder of the mind" by
David Reisman.
Is all of this a little fast and furious for you? Well, even as
you read this, turbomind developments are probably going beyond
what Wheeler suggests in his book. But not to worry -- his book
is in electronic text, and thus infinitely revisable.
Or, if you like, call Wheeler's on-line, 24 hour a day "Virtual
Academy," whose number is listed at the end of his book. Or pay
an electronic visit to our on-line Connect Ed campus anytime.
You'll find dialogue ongoing in both places about the "Virtual
Society."
-------------
author's note: Paul Levinson is President and Founder of
Connected Education, Inc., and Director of the On-Line Programs
of the New School for Social Research. This review to be
published in hardcopy in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of
Social and Biological Structures.
Netweaver readers with accounts on the EIES system may order Dr.
Wheeler's diskbook by leaving an electronic message for Dr.
Wheeler (EIES account number 2753). Netweaver readers who do
not have accounts on the EIES system may contact Dr. Wheeler
online directly through his Virtual Academy, accessible by modem
at 1-805-684-5621. Copies of the Virtual Society diskbook may
also be ordered through Connected Education, Inc.'s online
Bookorder service, staffed by Ms. Gail S. Thomas. To place
orders through Bookorder, leave electronic messages for Ms.
Thomas at EIES number 1983, CompuServe number 74206,507, or
SourceMail number bcf489. Harvey Wheeler's VIRTUAL SOCIETY book
currently available on MS-Dos, MAC, or CP/M disk.
6 (of 8) LISA CARLSON July 3, 1988 at 14:37 Eastern (8324 characters)
ENA NETWEAVER Volume 4, Number 7, Article 6 (July 1988)
POTHOLES IN THE HIGHWAYS OF THE MIND
Part I
David R. Hughes
[note: Remarks delivered to the Electronic Networking
Association (ENA) Conference, Philadelphia, PA May 14th,
1988. May be ported or quoted at will.]
For the past 11 years I have intensively, explored,
developed, celebrated, publicized and promoted the use of
personal computers hooked to modems interconnected to other
devices to enhance every part of individual and community life.
I am no less enthusiastic about the potential benefits to
mankind of the universal use of these personal digital devices
today than I was that morning in 1977 when I loaded the earliest
small systems wordprocessor called Electric Pencil, into the
first personal computer I could get my hands on, a TRS-80 Model
I with cassette drive, and contemplated the revolution in
writing inherent in the keys which let me backspace and blot
out.
I have been singing ASCII songs ever since.
But there is nothing predestined about whether the
Information Age is going to be a curse or a blessing. By
themselves microchips and modems are neither good nor evil. Only
the acts of individual and collective man that will make them
so.
Unless those few hundreds of thousands of us sprinkled
amongst the other 5 billion people of this planet who have never
typed ATDT - we who have both explored and integrated into our
lives and work these revolutionary tools of the mind take the
leadership in insisting that existing powers and inertias do not
either perpetuate the compromises forced on us by the gigantism,
and yes, 'mass' mindset of the Industrial Age, or use these
tools to constrain and limit rather than liberate the individual
human spirit it simply will not occur.
There are already Potholes showing up in the Highways of
the Mind. And the most insidious of them are being dug with the
best of intentions. And those who have not spent much time
before a CRT cannot even grasp the implications of trends and
decisions that will decisively determine how the Information Age
will affect their lives and that of their children and
grandchildren.
Some of these potholes we are creating ourselves. Pogo is
right. We have met the enemy and he may be us.
When Admiral Poindexter, who didn't even know how to
delete his own e-mail, wrote an Executive Order for the
President that created a whole new genre of government
controlled information called 'sensitive, not classified' he was
attempting to deal with the problem of technological leakage to
foreign powers - with obvious implications for national
security. But when implemented by zealous bureaucrats in
agencies such as NASA, as well as FBI, CIA, and NSA, the
interpretation of what is 'sensitive' was so broad that
executives at Mead Central, and Lockheed Dialog data bases were
being intimidated to remove general scientific and legal
information from subscription access.
We were saved by the Ayatollah Khomeni - whose
Machiavellian acts so discredited Poindexter and North that the
President's Chief of Staff Howard Baker promised the Commerce
Committee of Congress that the order would be withdrawn.
Neither the problem of technological leakage nor vaguely
worded attempt to control it have gone away. It will be back in
many forms, I promise you. And the necessary exchange of papers
and collaboration by scattered minds via telecommunications if
we are to progress in an era where the main strategic resource
of the United States is its knowledge and brainpower can be
profoundly affected.
The increasing control of personal information by
government, at the very moment in time when it is becoming more
accessible to all, in a nation where freedom of speech, assembly
- online or off - underlies a great deal of our success as a
people, is an anathema to me. Don't Tread on my Cursor.
Paralleling these efforts to control information, are
attempts to define it in ways that encumbers what you put on a
CRT with all the baggage of history of other media.
I contend that the decisive heart of what you and I do
online, whether it be free local computer bulletin-board, a
university conferencing system, or a national commercial service
with e-mail, conferencing, and chat is essentially 'speech.' And
should be dealt with as such. But like the blind men at the
Elephant, some influential powers, such as the Office of
Technology Assessment, lobbyists for print publishers and
broadcasters would like to have it defined as 'publishing.'
Now some of it *is* an extension of publishing. That
does not concern me. Gutenburg is dead, and I want to do all I
can to bury him once and for all. I just mutter to myself when
otherwise sensible online people try to reincarnate him in such
bizarre forms as desktop publishing.
But if it is 'publishing' then whole sets of precedences
and laws start applying, not the least of which affects the
legal obligations of system operators - sysops - of even the
smallest one-line bulletin boards.
If what you enter onto my computer system which others
can read openly is 'publishing' then I am a publisher, and
therefore responsible for your utterances! I can be sued for
what you say on my computer, even if I am not around when you
say it! As a newspaper editor can be. So then, like newspaper
editors, I have to censor your unfettered speech, control you,
limit you, take away your freedom of public expression that the
blinking cursor and the dance of the red leads gave you.
Good heavens. We shall become no better, than that
permitted us by the Wall Street Journal, New York Times or
Rolling Stones.. That is hardly my idea of the highest
attainment of the civilization of man.
I do not pretend to be able to answer conclusively what
this new form of human communications that we refer to as
'computer conferencing' really is, but I can tell you that until
we understand and define it suitably so that laws may be struck
to both enable and fit it in with all other forms of human
communications, then it shall be at once an orphan and appendage
to history, not the dawning of a new age where the Minds of all
5 billion people on this planet will be connected to each other
directly and without interpreters. When that occurs THEN I will
be prepared to give an audience to those strange beings called
Reporters and Print publications.
Another whole area of concern is that of national, state
and even local telecommunications policy. When the Congressman
from my state of Colorado, now Senator Timothy Wirth, attempted
to accompany the Deregulation of AT&T with an update of the
Telecommunications Act of 1934, that company so inundated the
naive public - at their own expense ultimately - with lobbying
efforts to defeat it, the Congress of the United States crumpled
under the assault and left us with a crippled, technological
obsolete basic national law, left on the one hand to the FCC to
regulate as best it could, and on the other to put the whole
burden of defining our communications future on one man - Judge
Greene.
When the FCC, in its abysmal ignorance of the profound
implications of what they were doing attempted to add a $5 per
hour access fee charge to all the kinds of services you and I
use, and in league with well meaning but equally misguided
defenders of plain old residential voice telephone user
consumers, only the rattling of cursors from some 22,000 modem
telecom users slowed down the train. It did not stop it
completely. The FCC bent over backwards to excuse their delayed
imposition by every reason *except* the right ones, that it was
a long term self defeating public policy.
But while all modem users congratulate themselves in
stopping the FCC, I remind them all that the immediate reason
was the prospect of being hit hard soon in the personal pocket
book, and not, as we like to kid ourselves that the response was
only from altruistic motives of defending the online economic
freedom of future generations. If immediate $$$ decisions are
not at stake will the citizens of our Network Nation be so
vigorous.
[continued]
7 (of 8) LISA CARLSON July 3, 1988 at 14:38 Eastern (6592 characters)
ENA NETWEAVER Volume 4, Number 7, Article 7 (July 1988)
POTHOLES IN THE HIGHWAYS OF THE MIND
Part II
David R. Hughes
The threat is not all national. Only with the utmost online
political vigor, in improbable league with AT&T and MCI were we
able in the City of Colorado Springs to force the mayor to
withdraw his proposal to put a city sales tax on all out of LATA
telecommunications to raise a million dollars a year - at the
very time small information business telecom is struggling to
get off the ground, this act would have further retarded the
development of information economics. While ironically, at the
same Council meeting in my very business-conservative town, the
same Council was granting equipment tax relief to manufacturing
business. Companies rooted in the declining economics of the
late great Industrial Age. And nobody influential saw the
grotesque contradiction.
Hopefully they soon will. I can't suppress my urge to
make one small cheer for the 7 to 2 vote last Tuesday by my City
Council to issue everyone on Council a personal computer and
modem with which to communication with staff, each other, and
the public. Even with provisions for the public to dial in on
any electronic meeting and on a 'read only' basis monitor their
conduct of our government. So I can help keep the bastards
spending my $500 million a year honest.
I am hoping as a by-product that they will quickly enough
grasp the economics of the Information Age and make better
telecommunications decisions on account of it.
But how many of the 30,000 towns, 7,000 county
governments are online? Much less Congress. Without them so
being and quite soon, do you think they will make the right
decisions over the next critical decade as one dark regulatory
scheme after another slouches toward Washington to be born?
The threat posed by large business interests are very
great. The Regional Telephone Companies are knocking hard at the
Judge Greene's door to permit them, not only to expand their
role as common carriers, but to become providers of
information themselves. I believe Bob Shayon of the Annenburg
School talked about this as the control of both the conduit and
the content. That's the last thing we need.
Robert Horovitz, in Washington, who pops onto systems
occasionally out in the sticks where I live noted that:
"And things never are what they seem when dealing
with giant corporations. It seemed clear that
well-meaning technically-naive fronts like the
ACLU's Jerry Berman and Congs Kastenmeier and
Leahy were just being used by corporations
intent on converting legitimate privacy
interests into information control. The only
group that lobbies for public access is the news
media, and there again for selfish reasons."
But there is a far more subtle danger that is our fault!
Who amongst us bothers to try and communicate with sensible
brains inside the giant telephone companies? They are not
monoliths
Then there is a most subtle and yet little understood
threat that at first glance seems a blessing. The trend that has
been gathering force to put most government information online!
That's great you say. Oh? When coupled with an equally zealous
effort to "privatize" government services, the result may mean
that hitherto free and accessible information which affects
everyone's lives will be increasingly unaffordable and
inaccessible!
At least ONE institution is tracking this, the American
Library Association. In a marvelous little book published two
months ago, the ALA reports that the combination of the
withdrawal of 1 out every 4 of the 16,000 government
publications since 1982, and the trend to both privatize and put
into electronic form everything else has carried the policy of,
and I quote "cost-benefit analysis of all government
information activities, maximum reliance on the private sector
for the dissemination of government information, and cost
recovery through user charges" to the point that the ALA has
established the Ad Hoc Committee to Form a Coalition on
Government Information. The book is entitled Less Access to Less
Information by and about the U.S. Government.
I could go on and recite a litany of ruts in our road to
the future, any one of which can become an unbridgable chasm.
There are some which are so subtle and deeply, perhaps
unconsciously imbedded into the ethos of our culture that unless
we think about them we may never be able to deal with them
later.
One tiny one deals with what that incredible
telecommunications journalist from San Diego, Brock Meeks
pointed out on the Well a few days ago when I asked Wellites
what were their deepest communications fears.
"Dave, you might discuss the "moral rights"
issues of electronic communications. here again,
is an idea that springs from a column I'm working
up, So many of us have been talking about
privacy, access charges, etc., but what about the
*base* level concern of electronic communication
and information: that it is mailable and pliable
and that *IT CAN'T BE TRUSTED TO BE ACCURATE AND
TRUE* Why? A simple text editor can change the
outcome of the war of 1812; place Rommell at the
Eastern Front; make Hinkley the assassin of Robert
F. Kennedy."
He is talking about online ethical standards that inhibit
the rewriting of history by a twist of the Del Key.
It was brilliantly validated this morning when we were
discussing the distribution of the 27 Dukakis Campaign Issues on
BBSs. Some in the Dukakis Campaign are rightly concerned - in
this day of political dirty tricks - that if his positions are
spread on every BBS, that they can be tampered with. Dukakis'
could easily be made to be for SDI, rather than against it.
The list is growing of the things we have to start
getting far more concerned with.
W.B Yeats said it long ago - "In dreams begin
responsibility"
But it is only we who, riding far ahead of the 250
million other American travellers, who can not only spot these
potholes, but do something about them.
--------------
Let me call this the 'Unfinished Speech' - for I managed to
lose the concluding three paragraphs in a disk crash. But my
main points were made above. I'll let others complete the plot.
--
Patt Haring {sun!hoptoad,cmcl2!phri}!dasys1!patth
-or- uunet!dasys1!patth
Big Electric Cat Public Access Unix (212) 879-9031 - System Operator
"I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way." Jessica: Who Framed Roger Rabbit?michael@stb.UUCP (Michael) (09/20/88)
One point brought up is that electronic messages can be tampered with. Although this is true, it is also possible to publish "Fake papers", or "Fake press releases". Also, you can tamper with published statements-- out of context quotes, taking part of what people say, or just downright lies and slander (i.e., "He had a model at his house all weekend". "Did you watch the rear door" "uh, no." "Did you watch all the time?" "Uh, no". Is this a problem new to electronic messages? No. Is it made easier by electronic messages? Yes. Michael : --- : Michael Gersten uunet.uu.net!denwa!stb!michael : sdcsvax!crash!gryphon!denwa!stb!michael : Coff Coff <=== Stop smoking.