Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm!

Should this instantaneous subjugating potential – and it has been applied successfully in history before – which is being unleashed on the populations by these new techniques remain concealed? Something is hovering over our heads which looks like a “cybercult.” We have to acknowledge that the new communication technologies will only further democracy if, and only if, we oppose from the beginning the caricature of global society being hatched for us by big multinational corporations throwing themselves at a breakneck pace on the information superhighways.

Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm!

When one raises the question about the risks of accidents on the information highways, the point is not about the information in itself, the point is about the absolute velocity of electronic data. The problem here is interactivity. Computer science is not the problem, but computer communication, or rather the (not yet fully known) potential of computer communication … At the very moment that a military-informational complex is taking shape with some American political leaders, most prominently Ross Perot and Newt Gingrich, talking about “virtual democracy” in a spirit reminiscent of fundamentalist mysticism, how not to feel alarmed? How not to see the outlines of cybernetics turned into a social policy?

Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm!

Here lies a new and major risk for humanity stemming from multimedia and computers. Albert Einstein, in fact, had already prophesized as much in the 1950s, when talking about “the second bomb.” The electronic bomb, after the atomic one. A bomb whereby real-time interaction would be to information what radioactivity is to energy. The disintegration then will not merely affect the particles of matter, but also the very people of which our societies consist … One may surmise that, just as the emergence of the atomic bomb made very quickly the elaboration of a policy of military dissuasion imperative in order to avoid a nuclear catastrophe, the information bomb will also need a new form of dissuasion adapted to the 21st century. This shall be a societal form of dissuasion to counter the damage caused by the explosion of unlimited information.

Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm!

What will be gained from electronic information and electronic communication will necessarily result in a loss somewhere else. If we are not aware of this loss, and do not account for it, our gain will be of no value.

Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm!

We have global time, belonging to the multimedia, to cyberspace, increasingly dominating the local time-frame of our cities, our neighborhoods. So much so, that there is talk of substituting the term “global” by “glocal,” a concatenation of the words local and global. This emerges from the idea that the local has, by definition, become global, and the global, local. Such a deconstruction of the relationship with the world is not without consequences for the relationship among the citizens themselves.

Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm!

The dictatorship of speed at the limit will increasingly clash with representative democracy. When some essayists address us in terms of “cyber-democracy,” of virtual democracy; when others state that “opinion democracy” is going to replace “political parties democracy,” one cannot fail to see anything but this loss of orientation in matters political … The advent of the age of viewer-counts and opinion polls reigning supreme will necessarily be advanced by this type of technology.

Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm!

Together with the build-up of information superhighways we are facing a new phenomenon: loss of orientation. A fundamental loss of orientation complementing and concluding the societal liberalization and the deregulation of financial markets whose nefarious effects are well-known. A duplication of sensible reality, into reality and virtuality, is in the making … What lies ahead is a disturbance in the perception of what reality is; it is a shock, a mental concussion … The specific negative aspect of these information superhighways is precisely this loss of orientation regarding alterity (the other), this disturbance in the relationship with the other and with the world. It is obvious that this loss of orientation, this non-situation, is going to usher a deep crisis which will affect society and hence, democracy.

Building the Open Road: The NREN As Test-Bed for the National Public Network

The same advances in computing which created desktop publishing are delivering “desktop video” which will make it affordable for the smallest business, agency, or group to create video consumables. The NPN must incorporate a distribution system of individual choice for the video explosion. If the cable company wants to offer a package of program channels, it should be free to do so. But so should anyone else … Anyone who wishes to offer services to the public should be guaranteed access over the same fiber-optic cable under the principle of common carriage. From this access will come the entrepreneurial innovation

Building the Open Road: The NREN As Test-Bed for the National Public Network

Personal computer communications … are practically opaque. Users must be aware of baud rates, parity, duplex, and file-transfer protocols – all of which a reasonably well-designed network could handle for them … Messages bounce, conferencing commands are confusing, headers look like gibberish, none of it is documented, and nobody seems to care. The excitement about being part of an extended community quickly vanishes. On a National Public Network, this invites failure. People without the time to invest in learning arcane commands would simply not participate … The only way to bring information resources to large numbers of people is with simple, easy-to-learn tools.

Building the Open Road: The NREN As Test-Bed for the National Public Network

National Public Network developers should encourage the entry of as many new parties as possible. Just as personal computer companies started in garages and attics, so will tomorrow’s information entrepreneurs, if we give them a chance. Their prototypes today, small computer networks, electronic newsletters, and chat lines, are among the most vibrant and imaginative “publishers”{ in the world.