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Netizens-Digest Volume 1 Number 225
Netizens-Digest Saturday, December 12 1998 Volume 01 : Number 225
Netizens Association Discussion List Digest
In this issue:
[netz] NSF: Societal Dimensions of Engineering
[netz] Benton: Agreement on Spam
[netz] Habermas
[netz] Dave Farber's been pretty busy lately
[netz] IN FOCUS - The Net Effect!!! (fwd
[netz] Gov't Cryptography fools??? - subject choice
[netz] Excellent Resource
[netz] Re: THOUGHTS ON THE NEW COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 19:51:32 -0400
From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)
Subject: [netz] NSF: Societal Dimensions of Engineering
http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/sber/sdest/start.htm
The Societal Dimensions of Engineering, Science, and Technology (SDEST) program
consolidates two former NSF programs: Ethics and Values Studies, and Research
on Science and Technology. The program announcement is NSF 97-28. Target dates
for submitting proposals are February 1 and August 1.
In SDEST, the Ethics and Values Studies (EVS) component focuses on developing
and transmitting knowledge about ethical and value dimensions associated with
the conduct and impacts of science, engineering, and technology. The Research
on Science and Technology (RST) component supports research to improve
approaches and information for decision making concerning management and
direction of research, science and technology. In each of the past few years,
the program has made approximately 40 new awards, with a budget of about
$2.3 million.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 22:47:46 -0400
From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)
Subject: [netz] Benton: Agreement on Spam
MARKETERS AND NET ACTIVISTS REACH AGREEMENT ON SPAM
Issue: Electronic Commerce
A consensus may be emerging on how to regulate unsolicited, commercial
email. A meeting including the head of the Direct Marketing Association
(DMA) <http://www.dma.com>, representatives of the Coalition Against
Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE) <http://www.cauce.org> and an
executive from Microsoft Corp.resulted in both "opt-in" and "opt-out"
mechanisms for accepting or declining to receive marketing messages.
Anti-spam activists have supported a system where a person would have to
agree -- opt-in -- to receive the email while marketers have supported a
system by which people would have to request to not get unsolicited email
-- opt-out.
Both sides also pledged to support legislation which, at a
minimum, would prohibits false identification of the sender of commercial
| e-mail messages. And both sides have agreed to work toward creation of a
| nonprofit global opt-out list, supported by marketers and free to
| consumers, which would allow both business entities and individuals to
| perform a one-time global choice to reject receiving unsolicited
| commercial bulk e-mail.
Deirdre Mulligan, a lawyer for the Center for
Democracy and Technology <http://www.cdt.org> who at the request of the
Federal Trade Commission <http://www.ftc.org> led a yearlong working group
that studied potential solutions to the spam debate, said she was
heartened by the announcement. "I think what this shows is that when there
is a table created and people step back from the rhetoric, that there is a
lot of agreement at least on how to start addressing the problem,"
Mulligan said. "A year ago CAUCE and DMA couldn't agree on anything."
[SOURCE: New York Times (CyberTimes), AUTHOR: Jeri Clausing
<jeri@nytimes.com>
<http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/12/cyber/articles/08spam.html>
=========
A global opt-out site might be a fine place to install a global self-governance
mechanism, no?
kerry
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 22:47:46 -0400
From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)
Subject: [netz] Habermas
Jurgen Habermas, _Towards a Rational Society..._ (Heinemann, London,1971)
p56
"The capacity for control made possible by the empirical sciences
is not to be confused with the capacity for enlightened action...
"The power of technical control over nature made possible by
science is extended today directly to society: for every isolatable social
system, for every cultural area there has become a seperate closed system
whose relations can be analysed immanently in terms of presupposed systems
goals.."
p96
"The rationality of language games, associated with communicative
action, is confronted at the threshold of the modern period with the
rationality of means-ends relations, associated with instrumental and strategic
action. As soon as this confrontation can arise, the end of traditional
society is in sight; the traditional form of legitimation breaks down."
[See also J Ralston Saul, _Voltaire's Bastards_ (Macmillan, 1992)]
Albrecht Wellmer, "Reason, Utopia, and the Dialectic of Enlightenment," in
Richard J Bernstein, ed., _Habermas and Modernity_ (Basil Blackwell,
1985), p 43
"The disenchantment of the world consequently is the historical process
through which those cognitive structures have emerged which could support
a specifically modern conception of rationality and which provided the
basis for the emergence of modern science, the rationalisation of law on
the basis of a dissociation of 'legality' from 'morality' and the emancipation
of art from contexts of religious and practical concerns."
=========
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 10:59:07 -0800 (PST)
From: Greg Skinner <gds@best.com>
Subject: [netz] Dave Farber's been pretty busy lately
http://www.abcnews.com/sections/tech/DailyNews/msdoj981210.html
Maybe this is why has hasn't had a chance to answer Ronda's email.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 20:02:15 -0400
From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)
Subject: [netz] IN FOCUS - The Net Effect!!! (fwd
- ------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date sent: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 22:06:00 -0600 (CST)
From: ferry@mscd.edu
Subject: IN FOCUS - The Net Effect!!!
http://www.sciam.com/1999/0199issue/0199infocus.html
Scientific American: Science and the Citizen
IN FOCUS
THE NET EFFECT
The Internet can be a powerful tool for political
dissidents and "hacktivists." But the medium
has yet to reach the grassroots level
The Internet has dramatically altered the way many people perform numerous
tasks--communicating with one another, shopping, banking, making travel
arrangements, keeping abreast of the news. Now add to the list political and
human-rights reform. Proponents in those fields assert that the Internet and
the World Wide Web have become essential tools for effecting change. But
critics contend that the medium is often least available where it is most
needed.
The ongoing struggle for democracy in Indonesia underscores the power of the
Internet. Last spring protesters bypassed the state-controlled media there by
posting a Web site containing a database that kept track of the corruption of
then president Suharto. People across the country were continually adding
information about the accumulated wealth of the president and his children,
knowledge of which fueled an already inflammatory situation. Students also
relied on the Internet to coordinate their demonstrations, which eventually
led to Suharto's resignation.
Indeed, political dissenters and human-rights organizations around the world
have taken advantage of the Internet's ability to disseminate information
quickly, cheaply and efficiently. The Zapatista rebels have exploited it to
garner support among international journalists and sympathizers against the
Mexican government. The Free Burma Coalition uses its Web site to encourage
consumers to boycott companies doing business in Myanmar. And the Digital
Freedom Network routinely posts on the Web the writings of political
dissidents, such as Raúl Rivero of Cuba, who are censored in their homelands.
"To build up on-line communities with such limited resources is amazing,"
notes Xiao Qiang of Human Rights in China, a group based in New York City,
which uses the Internet to organize letter-writing campaigns. Adds William F.
Schulz, New York executive director of Amnesty International USA, "the Web is
a critical new tool that we now have. It has radically increased our ability
to funnel information."
For their part, governments face a quandary: How do they cobble together
restrictive policies that will help them maintain the status quo without
stifling the Web's many business benefits? Because of Indonesia's solid
economic growth before the recent downturn, the country had a hands-off policy
toward the Internet, which many companies had used to communicate with
suppliers and customers across the sprawling archipelagic nation. But the same
medium that enabled firms there to monitor the status of their factories and
inventories also allowed dissidents to mobilize.
[...]
Yet while some people have proclaimed the dawning of a new age in electronic
activism, others caution that the Internet's effect may be grossly
exaggerated. Of a total worldwide population of about six billion people,
only a tiny fraction is wired, and most of that is in North America, Europe
and Japan, geographic areas not particularly known for political tyranny or
egregious human-rights violations. For this reason, critics say the view of
the Internet as a juggernaut for implementing sweeping reforms is an
overblown, North- centric perspective. "How many people in the world have
never even made a phone call? Maybe a third to a half. And how much impact do
you think the Web's having on them?" asks Patrick Ball, senior program
associate for the Science and Human Rights Program of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science.
The North-South dichotomy could worsen as the experiences of countries such as
Indonesia and China make other nations wary of going on-line. In Saudi Arabia,
for example, Internet service providers must apply for a license through the
government, which requires that Web traffic be filtered through state-
controlled proxy servers. And a host of governments have stepped up their
efforts to make certain activities illegal, if for no other reason than to
instill a chilling effect among the general populace. Last spring a Shanghai
software engineer was arrested for allegedly sending a list of the e-mail
addresses of thousands of Chinese to a U.S.-based dissident publication. Such
acts notwithstanding, countries have also been loath to pull the plug on the
Internet, fearing that the medium will be essential for their future economic
success.
But the greatest value of the Internet certainly goes far beyond the actual
numbers of people on-line, asserts Jagdish Parikh of Human Rights Watch in
New York City. "How many people in China have Internet access? Not many," he
notes. "But then why is the government there rushing to make laws restricting
access? It's because the Internet makes people realize that they should have
the legal, codified right to information."
- -Alden M. Hayashi
===================
The wired/unwired ratio is continuously changing, of course, but it will change
least in the regions which are least wired already. How might a wired community
(such as this?) optimize the 'net effect' in even as fundamental a human right
as literacy?
kerry
"Send one kbyte; Levy one cent tax."
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 09:40:18 -0500
From: "P.A. Gantt" <pgantt@icx.net>
Subject: [netz] Gov't Cryptography fools??? - subject choice
FYI:
Forwarded with attribs. and permission from Lovey.
=================================================
Call to Action:
A Strike is being called for Monday December 14 to protest the Wassenaar
Arrangement. Please refer to: http://www.zanshin.com/%7Ebobg/
It will explain the Wassenaar Arrangement and the Strike.
If you don't care there is a section on this page called "I don't care".
Radically Yours,
Lovey Kelly
"This is a global call for computer professionals to strike on Monday,
14
December, 1998 to protest the signing of the Wassenaar Arrangement, an
international treaty that imposes new restrictions on cryptographic
software technology. The strike is meant to raise awareness about the
importance of cryptography, about the U.S. government's wrongheaded
attempts to curtail its use, and about the strong-arm tactics used by
the United States to pressure other countries into limiting their
citizens' rights the way it has limited its own.
- --
P.A. Gantt, Computer Science Technology Instructor
Electronic Media Design and Support Homepage
http://user.icx.net/~pgantt/
<a href="mailto:pagantt@technologist.com?subject=etech"Email me</a>
To leave me a message or learn more:
http://www.InsideTheWeb.com/mbs.cgi/mb222487
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 14:26:45 -0600
From: Eric Spellmann <espell@arn.net>
Subject: [netz] Excellent Resource
Hi. Love the list. I am an Internet teacher in Texas. Recently, I found a
free online newsletter that has helped me tremendously. It's called
"Premium Links." It's sent out every Thursday morning and contains five
excellent sites. The author's goal is to only list sites worthy of a
bookmark. He divides the sites amongst five categories, including
"Education", "Home and Family", "Business, "The Arts", and "Just for Fun."
The educational site is my favorite, and he is right: I have bookmarked
most of them.
To subscribe, send a blank e-mail message to premiumlinks@usa.net with the
word "subscribe" in the subject (minus the quotes). If you want to see a
sample newsletter, head to:
http://freecenter.digiweb.com/computers/premiumlinks/
The newsletter is in HTML format so make sure your e-mail program can
display HTML. Hope this helps! It certainly helped me find the GOOD STUFF.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 15:19:31 -0500 (EST)
From: Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com>
Subject: [netz] Re: THOUGHTS ON THE NEW COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY
MichaelP <papadop@peak.org> writes:
>LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE - December 1998
>THOUGHTS ON THE NEW TECHNOLOGY
>On communication
>by JOSI SARAMAGO*
>The 19th century Spanish philosopher Francisco Goya, better known as the
>great painter, once wrote "The sleep of reason breeds monsters". In our
>own time, with the explosion of new communications technologies, are these
>technologies perhaps breeding new monsters right before our eyes? Of
>course, the new technology is the product of reason. But is it a reason
I am wondering if this author is referring to the Internet? If so
this is a very misleading portrayal of the Internet.
The Internet is *not* only the product of reason but it makes it
possible for people to reason together and to communicate across
all sorts of barriers.
>that is awake in the real sense of the word - in other words, attentive,
>vigilant, and stubbornly critical? Or is it dozing and half asleep? And
>does it, at the moment of creating and imagining, go off the rails and
>ends by creating and imagining monsters?
The Internet makes it possible for people to be vigilant, attentive,
and stubbornly critical.
But there is a battle over the Internet. There are those forces
who want to turn it into a one way wire much like television.
However, to fight those forces, it is crucial that one understand
what the Internet is and also the attack on it.
This article does a disservice as it misrepresents what the Internet
is and thus disarms for the attack.
>At the end of the 19th century, when the railways were becoming a new
>means of communication, the doom-mongers denounced the railway engine and
>claimed people would die of asphyxiation in the tunnels. They maintained
>that at speeds higher than 50 km an hour, blood would start spurting from
>people's ears and noses and horrible convulsions would lead to death.
>These were the professional pessimists who always query any progress made
>by reason - obscurantists who reckon that reason can never produce good.
>Though they are wrong in the final analysis, it is true that progress can
>be both good and bad.
But the railways were not means of communication in the sense that
the Internet is. They were means of transport (which is a form of
communication), but not the kind of dynamic commication that
the Internet provides for.
Someone sent this article, and I can respond to it.
This is a very different quality from just being delievered someone.
This makes possible the participatory activity that are necessary
to help to shape this new medim, and in fact, this participatory
activity has shaped this new medium.
>It goes without saying that trains are good when they take us on holiday
>they transport the goods that we need. But they are bad when hauling
>people off to extermination camps or transporting weapons of war.
But how does this relate to the nature of the Internet?
There is currently a fundamental difference in that the Internet
makes it possible to oppose the extermination camps. It's isn't
just a passive means of transport.
>Like trains, the Internet is neither good nor bad in itself. It can only
>be judged by the uses to which it is put. Which is why, today more than
>ever, reason needs to be wide awake.
This is an important point of disagreement.
The Internet as we know it is the result of the participation of
a great number of people in helping to create the content and the
form that it exists in.
And there are those trying to replace the educational and scientific
content with commercial content.
So it is more than the uses it is put to, it is what is contributed
to it and whether those who care for it put up the needed battle
to fight against its enemies.
>Say a person took 500 newspapers from around the world every day. People
>would probably say he was mad. And it would be true. Because only a fool
>could reckon to read 500 newspapers a day. You'd have to read one every
>three minutes - more than 20 an hour - and keep it up round the clock.
>People seem to forget this simple truth when they get so excited by the
>thought that, with the digital revolution, they can now get 500 channels
>on their TVs. But how are 500 channels going to keep them better informed
>than 500 newspapers that they physically cannot read?
But this is not what the Internet is. This may be what the commercial
world would like the Internet to be.
The Internet is the users communicating and discussing, contributing,
etc. It is the fact one can so science even though one doesn't
have the credentials of a scientist, that one can participate
in government decisions even though one is only from the grassroots
not from the world of power and wealth.
One can write ones own newspaper or work with others to write a
newspaper and make it available to others.
One can be part of the movement to create and spread linux around
the world.
One can be a netizen, an internet.citizen, and contribute to
making the Internet a better place.
All this is possible online, and not part of the phony vision of
what the Internet is that the offline press presents.
>The subscriber to these 500 channels will end up with feverish
>expectations that no image will satisfy. They say that a picture's worth a
But the Internet is not 500 channels, but 500 ways to participate
in the life of the Internet and communicate with people around the
world.
>People say that the new technology is bringing us close to total
>communication. The expression is misleading. It suggests that the totality
>of human beings on the planet are now able to communicate with each other.
>Unfortunately this is not the case. Barely 3% of the world's population
>has access to a computer. And even fewer are able to access the Internet.
>The vast majority of our fellow humans are not even aware of the existence
>of these technologies - they still don't have the basic benefits of the
>industrial revolution: drinking water, electricity, schools, hospitals,
>roads, railways, refrigerators, cars, etc. If nothing is done, the present
>information revolution will also pass them by.
But the object is to spread the Net, to challenge governments and
scientists around the world to help spread it, not to lament that
*not* everyone has access yet.
The Internet has in less thatn 2 decades (from the 1983 cutover date
to tcp/ip) spread far and wide, breaking down barriers that
most people would have believed impossible.
>Information only makes us wiser and more knowledgeable if it brings us
>closer to our fellow humans. Now that we have long-distance access to all
>the documents we need, we run an increasing risk of dehumanisation. And of
>ignorance. Nowadays the key to culture doesn't lie in experience and
>knowing, but in your aptitude at hunting down information on the Net. You
>can be entirely ignorant of the world - the real social, economic, and
>political world you live in - yet accumulate every possible kind of
>information.
But the Internet is *communication* not information. It's the interconnection
of networks and of computers and of people.
We can share information, and we can share thoughts and poems, and
our scientific observations, and our programs, and hopes and
dreams.
>Communication is ceasing to be a form of communion. We are
>sadly seeing the ending of real person to person communication. Soon we
>will start to feel nostalgic for our old libraries: the days of leaving
>the house, travelling to the library, going in, asking for a book, taking
>it in your hands, feeling the work of the printer and the binder, noting
>the traces of previous readers who have handled the book from one
>generation to the next...
I have met more people around the world since getting access to
the Internet than I ever imagined possible.
And then I can keep up with those people by email, or by being
on the same mailing list or Usenet newsgroup.
And I can share what I read with others around the world, or
even put together something for them to read.
So everyone an author, everyone a letter writer, everyone a scientist,
everyone a lobbyists
All of this is possible via the Internet, though the Internet is
still only in its infancy (it's only 15 years old actually :-)
>It looks like the nightmare scenario of science fiction: everyone shut in
>their own apartments in complete solitude, isolated from everyone and
>everything, but on-line with the Net and in communication with the planet.
>The end of the material world, of experience, of bodily contact...
To the contrary, even in their wildest dreams, very few writers
could have foretold the human-computer communications system
that today circles the globe and connects people around the world.
In fact it has shrunk the world. I am in contact with people in
Africa, in Euorpe, in Asian, and around the U.S.
It is making communication with people as necessary to everyday
life as is water to drink or air to breath.
>Increasingly we are caught up in virtual reality. Whatever people say,
>this virtual reality is as old as the world, as old as our dreams. And
>those dreams have led us into extraordinary, fascinating virtual
>universes, into continents that are new and unknown, where we have lived
>exceptional circumstances, adventures, loves and dangers. And sometimes
>nightmares too. Which Goya warned us of. But that doesn't mean we should
>curb our imagination and creativity.
But the dreams are becoming real, or have more than ever the potential to
become real. And what happens via the Internet is *not* virtual
reality. We are really communicating with people around the world,
facilitated by the help of the computer we are typing on and the
internet that our messages ride on.
The technology is making a much more level of communication possible
than we might have in our wildest dreams imagined.
It is enabling the communication, it is breaking down the barriers
to the communication.
>Rather it is a question of ethics. What are the ethics of the likes of
>Bill Gates and Microsoft who are fighting tooth and nail to win the battle
>of the new technologies for maximum personal profit. Or the corporate and
>stock exchange whizz-kids who can use advanced communications technologies
>to ruin countries or bankrupt companies the world over? Or the Pentagon
>generals who profit from the advances in image synthesising to programme
>their Tomahawks more efficiently in the direction of Iraq?
But Bill Gates and Microsoft are *not* the Internet.
On the other hand, the Internet is making possible linux development
and spreading unix around the world so people have an alternative
to Bill Gates and Microsoft.
Also the Internet makes it possible to let the world know when
there are abuses and problems and so draw the searchlight of public
concern to problems so they will be taken on.
>And the majority of people capitulate. They accept the new world that we
>are told is inevitable. They seem to have given up - given up both their
>rights and their duties. In particular, the duty to protest. As if
>exploitation had disappeared and the manipulation of public opinion had
>been banned. As if the world was governed by the well-meaning and
>communication had suddenly become the province of angels.. .
I don't see the majority of people capitulating, but I do hear
diatribes against the Internet that misrepresent the significant
new communications medium that has been developed by the hard
and dedicated work of many people around the world.
This is very far from capitulation. It is the opposite. It is
doing the hard work necessary to create and then contribute
to and shape a communications medium critically needed to solve
the hard problems of our times.
And it would be good to see what otherwise is often a progressive
and valuable newspaper, Le Monde Diplomatique, print a debate
over the Internet, print some of the hard battle it took to
build it (with important contributions by French computer scientists
like Louis Pouzin), print the important new developments it
makes possible, rather than merely printing a misrepresentation
of the nature of the Internet, so it can be set up for attack
by its enemies.
______________________________________________________________
>(This text is a version of an unpublished speech made by the author in
>Alicante, Spain, on 29 March 1995, in the context of a seminar on "New
>technologies and information of the future", organised by Joaquin Manresa
>for the Cultural Foundation of the Caja de Ahorros del Mediterraneo (CAM).
>Josi Saramago refers to this meeting in his book Cadernos de Lanzarote.
>Diario III, published by Caminho, Lisbon, 1997.)
>** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
>is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest
>in receiving the included information for research and educational
>purposes. **
Ronda
ronda@panix.com
Netizens: On the History and Impact
of Usenet and the Internet
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/
in print edition ISBN 0-8186-7706-6
------------------------------
End of Netizens-Digest V1 #225
******************************
