Volume 4, Number 7 ---CONTENTS--- July 1988

1 Masthead and Index


2 ENA UPDATE ................................ by Lisa Kimball

New ENA projects are on the drawing board. Invitation to
GET INVOLVED!

3 TECHNOLOGICAL SALVATION AND ELECTRONIC NETWORKING
KEYNOTE ADDRESS to the ENA CONFERENCE.
.... 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 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.

5 POTHOLES IN THE HIGHWAYS OF THE MIND
KEYNOTE ADDRESS to the ENA CONFERENCE. ...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."

POTHOLES IN THE HIGHWAYS OF THE MIND
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 year, 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 backspacY{ 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 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 the 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.

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 the
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, 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.

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 enco]{nter or a one-night stand; the relationship with
the new means of communication is 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 -K{
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 co[{munity 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
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 hin{ 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.

TECHNOLOGICAL SALVATION AND ELECTRONIC NETWORKING
Keynote Address to the ENA Conference - May, 1988
Part I
by Robert Lewis Shayon

In the 1950s, Lisa Kimball'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, which 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 Kimball
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 on 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.

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 lifestyle 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
nationwide. 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 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
Kimball and her associates. Enjoy it, but remember also that for my
granddaughter, 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.

ENA UPDATE
by Lisa Kimball

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

* * *
ENA is full of energy coming out of the May conference. Now is a

great time for you to get involved.