Sender: John Whiting <•••@••.•••> My rhetorical lament on the passing of the Internet seems to have sparked off a serious discussion of alternatives. All of them rely on a dedicated corps of technicians with a common ethical/ philosophical orientation. (In today's terminology, such a paradigm is unequivocally "elitist", a useless and even harmful neologism.) Looked at from one perspective, the Cyber-Rights correspondence has fallen into roughly two categories: the passionate, often eloquent espousal of First-Amendment libertarianism, and the pragmatic pursuit of tactics on its behalf. As the forces of reaction win skirmish after skirmish in the legislative battle for the soul of the Internet, we libertarians tend to become frenetic or dispirited. Those with a financial stake in the Net have their own unique problems of survival, which are those of the occupants of any open space which is being fenced off by monopolists. Others, who have found it to be a forcing-bed for creativity, lament the exploitation of this hitherto obscure community which, like Montmartre or Greenwich Village, has served as an artists' colony for the gifted and the impecunious. (Having grown up in Provincetown more than half a century ago, I have vivid memories of how such places function.) The prospect which I see at this turning point in the Internet's history is based on my observation of other colonies which have been discovered and exploited. The symptoms are overcrowding, creeping vulgarity, and escalating expense. Death is slow; in little side streets away from the burger joints and the gift shops, artists who bought their property when it was cheap continue to work and to gather in each others homes for mutual support. Quality of life, that ineffable substance without which the economic structures are an empty framework, is somehow preserved. In the brief time I've been reading the postings to the Internet, I've encountered a handful of correspondents who have produced prose of a quality which would distinguish the pages of any journal. One wrote of his single-minded dedication to intellectual integrity in a technological environment; another remembered the cultural ambiguity of the Okinawans and their relationship to occupying American forces. An old friend who was once managing editor of a major New York magazine tells me that the best writing he now sees is electronically transmitted. I'm thinking about starting a modest periodical addressed to the un-wired and devoted exclusively to Internet essays. The point of all this is, don't lose heart even when you observe a proliferation of shopping malls and an apparent contraction of anarchist creativity. Early in nineteenth-century England there was a small group of people who believed passionately in truth, beauty and political justice. They had few resources. Most of them lived short lives. Their voices were like murmers in a tempest. When they died, they were soon forgotten. But they had the good fortune to be poets. Their names were William Godwin, John Keats, and Percy and Mary Shelley. There are still poets among us. Even on the World Wide Web, it's possible to turn off the graphics. John Whiting Diatribal Press London ~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~-~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~ Posted by Andrew Oram - •••@••.••• - Moderator: CYBER-RIGHTS (CPSR) Cyber-Rights: http://www.cpsr.org/cpsr/nii/cyber-rights/ ftp://www.cpsr.org/cpsr/nii/cyber-rights/Library/ CyberJournal: (WWW or FTP) --> ftp://ftp.iol.ie/users/rkmoore Materials may be reposted in their _entirety_ for non-commercial use. ~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~-~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~
