Newsgroups: alt.nettime


	previous	workgroup	thread	next


Subject: No Subject
From: owner-nettime-l@Desk.nl
Date: 1 Oct 1997 23:12:34 +0100

* * * * *

> Message-Id: <m0xGVdH-0000K8C@freebse.contrib.de>
> Subject: Richard K. Moore: Democracy and Cyberspace 1/2
> To: nettime-l@Desk.nl
> Date: Wed, 1 Oct 1997 21:44:31 +0100 (MET)
> From: "Pit Schultz" <pit@uropax.contrib.de>
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>
> DEMOCRACY AND CYBERSPACE
>
> Copyright 1997 by Richard K. Moore
> Wexford, Ireland
> rkmoore@iol.ie
> http://www.iol.ie/~rkmoore/cyberjournal
>
> Presented at International Conference
> "Discourse and Decision Making in the Information Age"
> University of Teesside
> 18 September 1997
> [Revised: 24 Sep]
>
>
> Digital cyberspace: a quick tour of the future
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> Let's stand back for a moment from today's Internet and from the
> temporary lag in deployment of state-of-the-art digital technology.
> >From a longer perspective, certain aspects of the future cyberspace
> are plain to see.
>
> As regards transport infrastructure - the pipes - cyberspace is
> simply the natural and inevitable integration/rationalization of the
> disparate, patched-together, special purpose networks that make up
> the nervous system of modern societies. Besides the _public_
> distribution systems such as terrestrial and satellite broadcast,
> cable, and telephone (cellular and otherwise), this integration will
> also extend to dedicated _private_ systems, such as handle point-of-
> sale transactions, tickets and reservations, inter-bank transfers,
> CCTV surveillance, stock transfers, etc.
>
> The _cost savings_, _performance gains_, and _application
> flexibility_ brought by such total integration are simply too
> compelling for this integration scenario to be seriously doubted.
> Just as surely as the telegraph replaced the carrier pigeon, and the
> telephone replaced the telegraph, this integration is one bit of
> progress that is bound to happen, one way or another, sooner or
> later.
>
> Significant technical work is still required on the infrastructure,
> to provide efficiently and reliably such mandatory features as
> security, guaranteed bandwidth, accountability, authentication, and
> the prevention of "mail-bombs" and other Internet anomalies. But
> these features don't require rocket science - they are more a matter
> of selecting from proven technologies and agreeing on standards,
> interconnect arrangements, and implementation schedules.
>
> The global digital high-bandwidth network - the hardware of
> cyberspace - will in fact be the ultimate distribution mechanism for
> the mass-media industry: it will subsume broadcast (air and cable)
> television, video-tape rentals, and perhaps even audio cd's. These
> familiar niceties will go the way of vinyl records and punched cards.
>
> Cyberspace will be the universal connection of the individual to the
> world at large: "transactions on the net" will be the the way to
> access funds and accounts, make purchases and reservations, pay
> taxes, view media products (films, news, sports, entertainment, etc),
> initiate real-time calls, send and receive messages from individuals
> and groups, query traffic-congestion patterns, etc. ad infinitum.
>
> Each transaction will have an associated price - posted to your
> account - with some portion going to the ultimate vendor (eg, content
> provider) and some going to the various intermediaries - just as with
> credit card purchases today.
>
>
> Today's Internet: democratized communications
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> Today's Internet is most remarkable for its cultural aspects.
> Technically, Internet is one small episode in the ever-evolving
> parade of technology, and soon to be outmoded. But culturally - and
> economically - Internet seems to be a phenomenon nearly unprecedented
> in human history.
>
> Internet is a non-monetized communications realm, an open global
> commons, a communications marketplace with a very special economics
> in both content and transport.
>
> Each physical node (and its connecting hookups) is, in essence,
> donated to the network infrastructure by its operator (government
> agency, private company, university, ISP) for his own and the common
> benefit - a classic case of anarchistic mutual benefit.
>
> Similarly the content of Internet is a voluntary commons: anyone can
> be a publisher or can self-publish their own work. Publications of
> all levels of quality and subject matter are available, generally for
> free. The only costs to a user are typically fixed and moderate -
> everyone in the globe is a local call away, so to speak, and
> communication with groups is as cheap and convenient as communication
> with individuals.
>
> Anyone can join the global Internet co-op for a modest fee. Internet
> brings the massification of discourse; it prototypes the
> democratization of media. Individuals voluntarily serve as
> "intelligent agents", forwarding on items of interest to various
> groups. Web sites bristle with links to related sites, and an almost
> infinite world of information becomes effectively accessible even by
> novices.
>
> Netizens experience this global commons as a democratic renaissance,
> a flowering of public discourse, a finding-of-voice by millions who
> might otherwise have exemplified Thoreau's "lives of quiet
> desperation". Like minded people can virtually gather together,
> across national boundaries and without concern for time-zones.
> Information, perhaps published in an obscure leaflet in an unknown
> corner of the world, suddenly is brought to the attention of
> thousands worldwide - based on its intrinsic interest-value.
>
> The net is especially effective in the coordination of real-world
> organizations - enhancing group communication, reducing travel and
> meetings, and enabling more rapid decision making.
>
> The real-world political impact of Internet culture, up to now, is
> difficult to gauge. Interesting and powerful ideas are discussed
> online - infinitely broader than what occurs in mass-media "public
> discourse" - but to a large extent such ideas seem buried in the net
> itself, and when the computer is turned off one wonders if it wasn't
> all just a dream, confined to the ether. So far, there seems to be
> minimal spillover into the real world.
>
> Ironically, at least from my perspective, it seems to be right-wing
> organizations that are making most effective political use of the net
> at present - organizing write-in campaigns, mobilizing opinion around
> focused issues, etc. Those of us with more liberal democratic values
> seem more divided and less driven to achieving actual concrete
> results. Present company excepted, of course.
>
> One wonders, however, what might happen if a period of popular
> activism were to occur, such as we saw in the 1960's, the 1930's,
> 1900's, 1848 , 1798, 1776, etc. If a similar episode of unrest were
> to recur, the Internet might turn out to be a sleeping political
> giant - coordinating protests, facilitating strategy discussions,
> mobilizing massive voter turnouts, distributing reports suppressed in
> the mass media, etc. The "people's" mass media could have awesome
> effect on the body politic, if some motivating urgency were to
> crystallize activism.
>
> Such a scenario is not just idle imagining. Eruptions of activism do
> in fact occur (there have been a few in Germany, France, and
> Australia recently, for example). The net is not widespread enough
> yet to have been significant in such events (as far as I know), but
> we may be very close to critical mass in some Western countries, and
> the power of Internet for real-world group organization has been
> tested and proven.
>
> This activist-empowerment potential of Internet is something that
> many elements of society would naturally find very threatening. Some
> countries, such as Iran, China, and Malaysia - where "motivating
> urgency" exists in the populous - take the threat of "excess
> democracy" quite seriously, and have instituted various kinds of
> restrictive Internet policies.
>
> I would presume - and this point will be developed a bit later - that
> awareness (in ruling circles) of the "subversive" threat from
> Internet lends considerable political support to the various net-
> censorship initiatives that are underway in Western nations, and that
> such awareness may largely explain the mass-media image of Internet
> as a land of hackers, terrorists, and pedophiles.
>
> Partly because of this potential activist "threat", and partly
> because of economic considerations, there is considerable reason to
> suspect that Internet culture will not long continue quite as we know
> it. Apart from censorship itself, chilling copyright and libel laws,
> and other measures, are in the works which can in various direct and
> indirect ways close the damper on the open Internet. The average Joe
> Citizen, spoon-fed by the mass-media, all to often holds the opinion
> that Internet is a haven of perverts and terrorists, and thus
> Internet restrictions are not met with the same public outcry that
> would accompany, for example, newspaper censorship.
>
> Internet offers a prototype demonstration of how cyberspace _could_
> be applied to enhance the democratic process - to make it more open
> and participatory. But netizens are not the only ones with their
> eyes on the cyberspace prize. We next examine another potential
> cyberspace client - the mass-media industry.
>
>
> The mass media: monopolized communications
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> Like the Internet, today's mass-media industry is also a global
> communications network, and also offers access to seemingly infinite
> information. Beyond these similarities, however, the two could not
> be more different. While Internet exchange is non-economic, mass-
> media increasingly is fully commercialized; while anyone can publish
> on the net, publication access to mass-media is controlled by those
> who own it; while the full spectrum of public thinking can be found
> on the net, discussion in the mass-media is narrow and systematically
> projects the world-view of its owners.
>
> In the mass-media, rather than voluntary contributors, we have
> "content owners" and "content producers". Instead of free mailing-
> lists, web-links, and voluntary forwarding agents, we have "content
> distributors" - including broadcast networks, cable operators ,
> satellite operators, cinema chains, and video rental chains. And
> instead of an audience of participants (netizens), we have
> "consumers".
>
> In both networks the information content reflects the interests of
> the owners. With Internet this means that the content is as broad as
> society itself. But with the mass-media, the narrow scope of content
> reflects the fact that ownership of mass-media, on a global scale, is
> increasingly coming to be concentrated in a clique of large corporate
> conglomerates. The mass-media does not serve discourse, education,
> or democracy particularly well - it's designed instead to distribute
> corporate-approved products to "consumers", and to manage public
> opinion.
>
> The U.S. telecom and media industries have long been privatized, and
> hence the corporatized version of mass media is most thoroughly
> evolved in the U.S. It is the U.S. model which, for the most part,
> seems destined to become the global norm - partly because the U.S.
> provides a precedent microcosm of what are becoming global conditions
> (a corporate dominated economy), and partly because the U.S.
> effectively promulgates its pro-corporate policies in international
> forums.
>
> As state-run broadcasting systems are increasingly privatized under
> globalization it is the deep-pockets corporate media operators who
> are likely acquire them, thus propagating the U.S. media model
> globally, although U.S. operators will by no means be the only buyers
> in the market.
>
> The U.S. model is a monopoly model - a "clique of majors" dominates
> the industry, just as the Seven-Sisters clique dominates the world
> oil market. "The Nation" (3 June 1996) published a remarkable road-
> map of the U.S. news and entertainment industry, graphically
> highlighting the collective hegemony of GE, Time-Warner, Disney-Cap-
> Cities, and Westinghouse. These majors are vertically integrated -
> they own not only production facilities and content, but also
> distribution systems - radio and television broadcast stations,
> satellites, cable systems, and cinema chains.
>
> We might think of Time-Warner and Disney as being primarily media
> companies, but for GE and Westinghouse, media is clearly a side-line
> business. They are into everything from nuclear power-stations and
> jet fighters, to insurance and medical equipment. Their broadcast
> policies reflect not only the profit-motive of their media companies,
> but equally the overall interests of the owning conglomerate. NBC is
> not likely, for example, to run an expose of GE nuclear-reactor
> safety problems or of corruption involving GE's government contracts.
>
> When you consider the ownership of the mass-media, and the additional
> influence of corporate advertisers, it is no surprise that the
> content of mass-media - not just news but entertainment as well -
> overwhelmingly projects a world view that is friendly to corporate
> interests generally.
>
> As globalization proceeds, these four conglomerates - along with
> Murdoch and others - will compete to buy up distribution and
> production facilities on a worldwide basis. The clear trend,
> following a shakeout period, is toward a global mass-media industry
> dominated by a clique of TNC (transnational corporation) "majors".
> Globalization of the media industry translates ultimately into
> corporate domination of global information flows, and the centralized
> management of global public opinion.
>
> Whereas the Internet precedent suggests the potential of cyberspace
> to connect citizens with one another on a participatory basis, a
> corporate-dominated mass-media industry sees cyberspace primarily as
> a product-distribution system and a means of opinion-control. In
> order to assess how cyberspace will in fact be applied, we need to
> examine the political context in which cyberspace will evolve - we
> need to take a closer look at this thing called "democracy".
>
>
> The see-saw of democracy and the advent of globalization
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> Democracy has always been a see-saw struggle for control between
> citizens at large and elite economic interests. This struggle has
> been perhaps more apparent in a country like Britain, where a
> consciously acknowledged class system long operated. In the U.S.,
> with its more egalitarian rhetoric, there has often been a tendency
> to deny the existence of such struggles and to embrace the mythology
> that popular sovereignty had been largely achieved in the "land of
> the free".
>
> But in fact, the tension between popular and elite interests was
> anticipated by America's Founding Fathers, was articulated explicitly
> by James Madison (primary architect of the U.S. Constitution), and
> was institutionalized in that document by the balance between the
> Senate and the House of Representatives, and by numerous other means.
>
> Under democracy, power is officially vested in the voters, and hence
> the balance of power between the elite and the people would seem to
> be overwhelmingly in favor of the people. For their part, the
>
> economic elite have considerable influence due to the investments and
> credit they control - and the funds they have available to influence
> the political process in various and significant ways.
>
> Hence the balance of power is not that easy to call, and there has in
> fact been a see-saw of power shifts over the past two centuries.
> During the late-nineteenth century "robber baron" era, for example,
> with its laissez-faire philosophy, there was a clear pre-dominance of
> elite power, with monopolized markets and widespread worker
> exploitation. In the reform movements of the early twentieth
> century, on the other hand, with its trust-busting and regulatory
> regimes, the elite found themselves on the defensive.
>
> In today's world of neoliberal globalization, the economic elite are
> again clearly in the ascendency. The vehicle of elite power and
> ownership today is the modern TNC, and globalization - with its
> privatization, deregulation, lower corporate taxes, and free-trade
> policies - adds up to a radical shift of power and assets from the
> nation state (where the democratic see-saw operates) to TNC's, over
> which citizens have no significant influence - the campaigns of Ralph
> Nader, Greenpeace, et al having been systematically constrained and
> marginalized.
>
> Economic policy making, which has traditionally fallen under the
> jurisdiction of sovereign nation states, is being transferred
> wholesale by various treaties to the the WTO (World Trade
> Organization), the IMF, and other faceless commissions - all of which
> are dominated overwhelmingly by the TNC community, particularly by
> that clique of TNC's which are known as the "international financial
> community".
>
> This transfer of economic sovereignty is most advanced in the Third
> World, where the IMF increasingly dictates economic, fiscal, and
> social policies at a micro level. In India, for example, public
> officials often turn directly to IMF staff for policy guidance,
> leaving the Indian government out of the loop entirely.
>
> The trends - and the binding treaty commitments - indicate that the
> First World as well is destined to come under increasing domination
> by this TNC-run, globalist-commission regime. Already we are
> beginning to see examples of such inroads, as U.S. policy toward Cuba
> is being challenged under NAFTA and EU beef-import policy is being
> challenged under the WTO, along with market protections for Carribean
> banana producers. These examples are only the tip of the formidable
> globalist iceberg lying in the path of the once-sovereign Ship of
> State.
>
> Globalization amounts to a coup d'etat by the global economic elite.
> _Temporary_ political ascendency in the West is being systematically
> leveraged into _permanent_ global political ascendency,
> institutionalized in the network of elite-dominated commissions and
> agencies. The see-saw game has been abandoned by the elite, and the
> citizenry find themselves down on their backs.
>
> The democratic process may continue to govern the affairs of the
> nation state, but the power and resources of the nation state are
> being radically constrained, democracy is being rendered thereby
> irrelevant, and global power is thus being shifted from democratic
> institutions to elite institutions. Democracy is less and less
> society's sovereign, even though public rhetoric continues as usual.
> The deliberations of the commissions go largely unreported - the
> globalist revolution, profound as it is, is mostly a stealth affair.
>
> According to this analysis, democracy is in considerable trouble
> indeed, and by comparison the future of cyberspace would seem to be a
> secondary concern. But the plot continues to thicken, as we proceed
> to an examination of propaganda and its institutionalized role in the
> machinery of modern democracy.
>
>
> Propaganda and democracy
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> As Noam Chomsky so competently documents in "Manufacturing Consent",
> propaganda has always been an essential mechanism in the machinery of
> democracy, the primary means by which the elite insure that their own
> interests are not overwhelmed by what Samuel P. Huntington refers to
> as the "excesses of democracy" and what James Madison referred to as
> "mob rule".
>
> Ownership of media, as a means to influence public opinion and
> ultimately the policies of government, has always been used to
> advantage by the economic elite in democracies - in the ongoing see-
> saw struggle for power. Popular movements have also made effective
> use of the media, from time to time, but in today's increasingly
> concentrated media industry, elite control over public opinion is for
> all intents and purposes total. It is so total, in fact, that just
> as a fish is not aware of the water through which he swims, one
> sometimes forgets how constrained the scope of public debate has
> become.
>
> Madison avenue techniques applied to campaigns, including focus on
> sound-bites, turns political campaigns into little more than
> advertising episodes, much like the release of a new toothpaste or
> hairspray. This has long characterized the situation in the U.S., and
> with Blair's takeover of the Labor Party, we've seen the same
> paradigm ported to the UK.
>
> Even opposition to the status quo is channeled and deflected by media
> emphasis, as with the militia movements (and Perot and Buchanan
> candidacies) in the U.S. and the National Front movements in UK and
> France, which are exploited so as to _define_ anti-globalist
> sentiment as being reactionary, ultra-nationalist, luddite, and
> racist; similarly environmental sentiments are regularly interpreted
> as being anti-labor, anti-prosperity, "elitist", etc.
>
> Demonization of governments and politicians - ie, blaming government
> for the problems caused by globalism and excessive corporate
> influence - is perhaps the single most potent coup of the mind-
> control media in promoting the decline of democratic institutions and
> the rise of globalism.
>
> Globalization itself further exemplifies the potency of media
> propaganda. The rhetoric of neoliberalism, with its "reforms" and
> "market forces" and "smaller government", is not just a _position_
> within the scope of public debate, but has come to be the very
> _frame_ of debate. Politicians and government leaders rarely debate
> _whether_ to embrace globalization, but compete instead to espouse
> national policies that _best accommodate_ the demands of
> globalization.
>
> As media itself is being globalized and concentrated, it is no
> surprise that globalization propaganda is one of its primary
> products. Whether the vehicle be feature film, network news,
> advertisement, panel discussion, or sit-com, the presumption of the
> inevitability of the market-forces system and the bankruptcy of
> existing political arrangements always comes through loud and clear -
> even when the future's dark side is being portrayed.
>
> The propagandistic success of this barrage is especially amazing in
> light of the utter bankruptcy of the neoliberal philosophy itself.
> The whole experience of the robber-baron era has simply vanished from
> public memory, in true Orwellian fashion, as we are told that market
> forces and deregulation are "modern" efficiencies, the brilliant
> result of state-of-the-art economic genius.
>
> This historical revision by omission has the consequence that no one
> brings up the fact that these policies have been tried before and
> were found sorely wanting - that they led to economic instability,
> monopolized markets, cyclical depressions, political corruption,
> worker exploitation, and social depravity - and that generations of
> reform were required to re-introduce competition into markets, to
> stabilize the financial system, and to institute more equitable
> employer/employee relations.
>
> The regulatory regimes that were in place before the Reagan-Thatcher
> era were there for very good reason - they adjudicated, with varying
> effectiveness, between society's desire for stability and citizen
> welfare, on the one hand, and the corporate desire for maximizing
> profits, on the other.
>
> These regimes implemented a generally reasonable accommodation
> between the interests of the elite and the people. But, with the
> help of today's media propaganda, everyone now "knows" that
> regulations are nothing more than the counter-productive ego-trips of
> well or ill-meaning politico bureaucrats who have nothing better to
> do than interfere in other people's business.
>
> Again in Orwellian fashion, today's "reforms" are in fact the
> _dismantlement_ of reforms - reforms which accomplished the
> moderation of decades of market-forces abuse. The power of the media
> to define and interpret events, and to set the context in which
> public discussion is framed, is immense. Old wine can be presented
> in new vessels, and black can be presented as white, as long as the
> message is repeated often enough and the facts that don't fit are
> never given airtime.
>
> The mass media is the front line of corporate globalist control - the
> very trenches in the battle to maintain elite domination; this fact,
> in addition to market forces, adds extra urgency to the pace of
> global media concentration. The central political importance of
> corporate-dominated mass media to the globalization process, and to
> elite control generally, must be kept in mind when attempting to
> predict the fate of Internet culture when commercial cyberspace
> begins to come online.
>
> In this regard, the treatment of cyberspace and Internet in the
> mass-media over the past few years lends some portending insights.
> There are two quite different images that are typically presented,
> one commercially oriented and the other not.
>
> The first image, frequently presented in fiction or in futuristic
> documentaries, is about the excitement of cyber adventures, the
> thrill of virtual reality, and the promise of myriad online
> enterprises. This commercially oriented image is projected with a
> positive spin, and suddenly every product and organization on the
> block includes a www.My.Logo.com on its packaging and advertising,
> with in many cases only symbolic utility. Madison avenue is selling
> cyberspace - but it's selling the commercial version yet to be
> implemented, it's pre-establishing a mass-market demand.
>
> The other image, very much anchored in today's Internet technology,
> has to do with sinister hackers, wacko bomb conspirators, and luring
> pedophiles. Those of us who use the net daily find such stories
> ludicrous and unrepresentative, but because we dismiss such stories
> we may not realize that for much of the general population, that's
> all they hear about today's Internet.
>
> If you'll permit me a personal anecdote - but a not atypical one...
> at the bank where my girl friend works, here in rural Ireland, the
> subject of Internet came up among some of the workers. None of them
> had ever been online, yet their unhesitating sentiment was that
> they'd never let their kids near that evil network, where they'd be
> immediately assaulted by obscene material and indecent proposals.
>
> The infamous Time article on Cyberporn, for example, was pure
> demonization propaganda - blatantly deceptive and sensationalist -
> and standard publication procedures were surreptitiously violated in
> order to get it printed. But the effect of the original publication
> on the general public was in no way undone by the mild apologies that
> were later offered.
>
> The U.S. CDA (censorship) initiative, whose passage was assisted in
> no small measure by the well-timed article, was fortunately rejected
> by the U.S. Supreme Court. But the defamation campaign against the
> non-economic Internet continues, in ironic contrast to the boosting
> images of its commercial future cousin (where no doubt the commercial
> pornographic offerings will in fact be equally graphic).
>
> The relationship between cyberspace and democracy is a complex one
> indeed. Internet culture, as the seeming prototype for future
> cyberspace experience, has enabled a renaissance of open public
> discussion - a peek at a more open democratic process. But this
> phenomenon has been experienced by a relatively tiny minority of the
> world's population, and may in fact not survive the commercial
> onslaught.
>
> On the contrary, as universal transport for mass-media products,
> cyberspace may in fact become the delivery vehicle for even more
> sophisticated manipulation of public opinion. Rather than the
> realization of the democratic dream, cyberspace may turn out instead
> to be the ultimate Big-Brother nightmare.
>
> In a world where most significant physical and financial events will
> involve online transactions, and in a world where backdoors are built
> into encryption algorithms and communications switches, everyone's
> every move is an open book to those who have the keys to the net
> nervous system - which would include government agents (on the basis
> of legality) as well as the operators of the system (on the basis of
> opportunity and laissez-faire non-oversight).
>
> >From the accounting records alone, there would be a complete trail of
> almost everything anyone does, and the privacy of this information
> (from government, police, credit bureaus, advertisers, direct
> mailers, political strategists, etc.) is far from guaranteed.
>
> Systematic massive surveillance by government agencies would be
> extremely easy, with the ability to track (undetected) purchases and
> preferences, financial transactions, physical location, persons and
> groups communicated with, and the content of communications. There
> is even the possibility of surreptitious gathering of audio and video
> signals from home sets which are thought to be "off" (one up on
> "1984"), and the remote overriding of home security systems,
> automobile functions (windows, engine), etc.
>
> In particular, no sizable group (such as a political organization or
> a public-interest group) could exist without having its every
> deliberation and activity being monitorable by government agencies,
> depending on how interested the authorities are in its activities.
>
> | The FBI draft would take two extraordinary steps. It would
> | prohibit the manufacture, sale, import or distribution within
> | the United States of any encryption product unless it contains a
> | feature that would create a spare key or some other trap door
> | allowing "immediate" decryption of any user's messages or files
> | without the user's knowledge.
> | In addition, it would require all network service providers
> | that offer encryption products or services to their customers to
> | ensure that all messages using such encryption can be
> | immediately decrypted without the knowledge of the customer.
> | This would apply to telephone companies and to online service
> | providers such as America Online and Prodigy.
> | -The Center for Democracy and Technology,
> | CDT POLICY POST, September 8, 1997
>
>
> Mandatory chip-based ID cards or even implants may seem fanciful to
> many, but the number of government and commercial initiatives in
> those directions worldwide is cause for serious alarm. Such devices
> would turn each citizen into an involuntary leaf node of the
> cyberspace network, his chip being remotely monitorable from who-
> knows-how many scanning stations, visible or otherwise.
>
> | Building on the present national photo-id card, the Korean
> | ID Card Project involves a chip-based ID card for every adult
> | member of the population. It is to include scanned
> | fingerprints, and is intended to support the functions of a
> | multi-purpose identifier, proof of residence, a driver's
> | licence, and the national pension card.
> | - Roger Clarke,
> | "Chip-Based ID: Promise and Peril"
>
> In summary, cyberspace promises not not only to be the ultimate
> commercial delivery channel for the mass media industry, but its very
> nature provides the opportunity for the mind-control aspects of the
> mass media to be carried out with incredible precision, and with full
> feedback-knowledge of who is actually receiving which information,
> and even what they are saying to their friends about it.
>
> Cyberspace could turn out to be the ideal instrument of power for the
> elite under globalism - giving precise scientific control over what
> gets distributed to whom on a global basis, and full monitoring of
> everything everyone does (and the accounting records are always there
> to go back and follow past trails when desired).
>
> Some readers may find the above scenario far-fetched; they may react
> with "It can't happen here". I would ask them "What is there to stop
> it?". The corporate domination of societal information flows is an
> inherent part of the seemingly unstoppable globalization process. We
> turn now from this "end view" of the scenario to an examination of
> how events are likely to unfold...
>
>
> Cyberspace: whose utopia?
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> The law doth punish man or woman
> That steals the goose from off the common,
> But lets the greater felon loose,
> That steals the common from the goose.
> - Anon, 18th cent., on the enclosures.
>
> One can think of digital cyberspace as a kind of utopian realm, where
> all communication wishes can be granted. The question is who's going
> to be running this utopian realm? We net users tend to assume we'll
> waltz into this utopia and use it for our creative purposes, just as
> we have Internet. But there are others who have designs on this
> utopia as well. It is a frontier toward which more than one set of
> pioneers have their wagons ready to roll.
>
> We're willing to pay a few cents per hour for our usage (and we
> complain of _any_ usage charges), and our need for really high per-
> user bandwidth is yet to be demonstrated. The media industry, on the
> other hand, can bring a huge existing traffic onto cyberspace - a
> traffic with much higher value-per-transaction than email and web
> hits, and a traffic that can gobble up lots of bandwidth. We want to
> pay commodity prices for transport, while the media industry is
> willing to pay whatever it needs to - and it can pass on its costs to
> consumers.
>
> >From a purely economic perspective, the interests of the media
> industry could be expected to dominate the rules of the road in
> cyberspace - just as the well-funded land developer can always out-
> bid the would-be homesteader. Whether it be purchasing satellite
> spectrum or lobbying legislatures, deep-pockets tend to get their
> way.
>
> But economic considerations may not be most decisive in setting the
> rules of the cyberspace road - the political angle may be even more
> important. Continued mass-media domination of information
> distribution systems is necessary if the media is to play its
> accustomed role as shepherd of public opinion. This role, as we have
> seen, is mission-critical to the continuance of the globalization
> process and to elite societal control in general.
>
> It is instructive in this regard to review the history of the radio
> industry in 1920s America...
>
> | In the 20's there was a battle. Radio was coming along,
> | everyone knew it wasn't a marketable product like shoes. It's
> | gonna be regulated and the question was, who was gonna get hold
> | of it? Well, there were groups, (church groups, labor unions
> | were extremely weak and split then, and some student groups)...
> | who tried to organise to get radio to become a kind of a public
> | interest phenomenon; but they were just totally smashed. I mean
> | it was completely commercialized. - Noam Chomsky
>
> Other nations followed a different track (BBC et al), but this time
> around it is the U.S. model that is predominating, as we have
> discussed.
>
> The twin _drivers_ in the commercial monopolization process are
> _economic necessity_ (squashing competition from independents for
> audience attention) and _political necessity_ (maintaining control
> over public opinion).
>
> The _mechanisms_ of domination include concentrated ownership of
> infrastructure, licensing bureaucracies, information property rights,
> libel laws, pricing structures, creation of artificial distribution
> scarcity, and "public interest" censorship rules. These tactics have
> all been used and refined throughout the life of electronic media
> technology, starting with radio, and their use can be expected as
> part of the cyberspace commercialization process.
>
> Indeed, the first signs of each of these tactics is already becoming
> evident. The U.S. Internet backbone has been privatized;
> consolidation of ownership is beginning in Telecom and in ISP
> services; WIPO (World Information Property Organization) is setting
> down over-restrictive global copyright rules, which the U.S. is
> embellishing with draconian criminal penalties; content restrictions
> are cropping up all over the world, boosted by ongoing anti-Internet
> propaganda; pricing is being turned over increasingly to "market
> forces" (where traditional predatory practices can operate); chilling
> libel precedents are being set; and moves are afoot to centralize
> domain-name registration, beginning what appears to be a slippery
> slide toward ISP licensing. And these are still very early days in
> the commercialization process.
>
> Consider the U.S. Telecom Reform Bill of 1996. Theoretically, it is
> supposed to lead to "increased competition" - but what does that
> mean?. there is a transition period, during which a determination
> must be reached that "competition is occurring". after that it
> becomes a more or less laissez-faire ball game, especially given the
> ongoing climate of deregulation and lack of anti-trust enforcement.
> There is no going back, no guarantee that if competition fades
> regulation will be restored.
>
> Consolidation is permitted both horizontally and vertically - a telco
> can expand its territory, and it can be sold/merged with content
> (media) companies. Prices and the definition of services are to be
> determined by "the market". It is well to keep in mind that the
> Telecom Bill was pushed through by efforts of telecom and media
> majors, and well to interpret "increased competition" in that light.
> And it is well to keep in mind that the globalization process tends
> to propagate the US media model.
>
> | To communications companies, then, the act has been a big
> | success. The U.S. commercial media system is currently
> | dominated by a few conglomerates -- Disney, the News
> | Corporation, G.E., cable giant T.C.I., Universal, Sony, Time
> | Warner and Viacom -- with annual media sales ranging from $7
> | billion to $23 billion. These giants are often major players in
> | broadcast TV, cable TV, film production, music production, book
> | publishing, magazine publishing, theme parks and retail
> | ope
>
> ----- End of forwarded message from pit@contrib.de -----
>
Sender: owner-nettime-l@basis.desk.nl
Precedence: bulk

---
# distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission
# <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: majordomo@icf.de and "info nettime" in the msg body
# URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@icf.de