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Netizens-Digest Volume 1 Number 338
Netizens-Digest Wednesday, September 15 1999 Volume 01 : Number 338
Netizens Association Discussion List Digest
In this issue:
Re: [netz] Re: Domain Names (fwd) and sigcomm99
[netz] Request for Assistance from the Internet Community
[netz] ARIN begins allocating IPv6 addresses
[netz] Chief executives swap thoughts on getting services to rural communities
[netz] UN E-mail flooded with East Timor messages
[netz] Dispute about role of government in Internet's history
[netz] NET LOSS- Government, Technology and Economics of Community- Ebook on the Web (fwd)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 20:50:45 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com>
Subject: Re: [netz] Re: Domain Names (fwd) and sigcomm99
Greg and others
Good to see Pat Townsend sticking up for the Internet. I'm in Boston
at the Sigcomm99 meeting - the special interest computer communications
acm group - and access is limited so I will have to wait
till I get back home to reply.
There was today a set of historical reports by some of the
folks who made important contributions to the development
of the ARPANET and the internet and then a panel this afternoon
of the award winners from SIGCOMM who made life long contributions
to the development of computer networking.
The day's events had some high spots like Craig Partridge telling
some of the development of the Domain Name System and the
problems that had to be solved to make it possible for those
on uunet with ! addressing, on the ARPANET with @ type addressing,
on csnet with another format (was it % used for addressing )
and on bitnet meeting to decide how they would agree to find
a way to have a means of addressing so that they could exchange
mail between networks.
And later talking to him when he said that he had wanted
to add but didn't have time that a lesson from his experiences
was that if the solution to a problem is hard, it is probably
what you are trying to do isn't the solution and you have to
go back to understand the problem better. I'm paraphrasiing
but it was an important understanding I thought and I'd wsihed
he had had more time for his presentation.
There were some other high spots like van Jacobsen telling
how in doing kernel modifications to get tcp/ip into
the BSD unix kernel he would send the code out to be
installed by the bsd community and people would send him
back the problems they had found so he could make the corrections
in the code.
I don't have time to report further now, but I'll try to
put sometihng together when I have some time.
Ronda
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 08 Sep 1999 10:24:35
From: John Walker <jwalker@networx.on.ca>
Subject: [netz] Request for Assistance from the Internet Community
Request for Assistance from the Internet Community
Add your voice to the call for International intervention.
John Walker
Dear Friends in Solidarity with East Timor,
The news from East Timor continues to call all of us who value the
international principles of peace and freedom to action:
here are some international addresses to encourage your colleagues or
students to use for immediate advocacy now that the struggle to get
action has moved into the UN Security Council.
Anything you can do to help will be most appreciated.
Every email helps!
Beth Gilligan
- --------------------------------------
UNITED NATIONS
**************
Secretary-General - Mr Kofi Annan - sg@un.org
SECURITY COUNCIL
***************
President - Brazil - braun@delbrasonu.org
Canada - canada@un.int
China - chnun@undp.org
France - france@un.int
Gabon - gabon@un.int
Gambia - gambia@un.int
Malaysia - malaysia@un.int
Namibia - namibia@un.int
Netherlands - netherlands@un.int
Russian Federation - rusun@undp.org
Slovenia - slovenia@un.int
United Kingdom - uk@un.int
Argentina - argentina@un.int
Bahrain - bahrain@un.int
United States - usa@un.int
OTHER PERMANENT MISSIONS TO THE UNITED NATIONS
*********************************************
Australia - australia@
Indonesia - indonesia@un.int
Portgual - portugal@un.int
International Red Cross - redcross@un.int
Vatican - vatun@undp.org
SOUTH EAST ASIAN MISSIONS TO THE UNITED NATIONS
********************************************
Cambodia - cambodia@un.int
Japan - japan@un.int
Korea (North) - Democratic People's Republic of Korea - dprk@un.int
Korea (South) - Republic of Korea - korun@undp.org
Laos - People's Democratic Republic - laos@un.int
Singapore - singapore@un.int
Thailand - thailand@un.int
The Phillipines - phlun@undp.org
USA EMAIL ADDRESSES
*******************
* President Bill Clinton - president@whitehouse.gov
* Chairman, Senate Foreign Relations Committee - Senator Jesse Helms -
jesse.helms@helms.senate.gov
* Speaker of the House of Representatives - Hon. J. Dennis Hastert -
speaker@mail.house.gov
INDONESIAN EMAIL ADDRESSES
**************************
President Yusuf Habibie - habibie@ristek.go.id
- ----------------
On-line Learning Series of Courses
http://www.bestnet.org/~jwalker/course.htm
Member: Association for International Business
- -------------------------------
Excerpt from CSS Internet News (tm) ,-~~-.____
For subscription details email / | ' \
jwalker@hwcn.org with ( ) 0
SUBINFO CSSINEWS in the \_/-, ,----'
subject line. ==== //
/ \-'~; /~~~(O)
"On the Internet no one / __/~| / |
knows you're a dog" =( _____| (_________|
http://www.bestnet.org/~jwalker
- -------------------------------
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 10:40:34 -0700 (PDT)
From: Greg Skinner <gds@best.com>
Subject: [netz] ARIN begins allocating IPv6 addresses
http://www.arin.net/IPv6announcement.html
This is fairly old news, but I imagine it's not received much publicity.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 14:33:26 -0700 (PDT)
From: Greg Skinner <gds@best.com>
Subject: [netz] Chief executives swap thoughts on getting services to rural communities
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Business/ap19990909_1239.html
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1999 13:25:39
From: John Walker <jwalker@networx.on.ca>
Subject: [netz] UN E-mail flooded with East Timor messages
UN E-mail flooded with East Timor messages
The request sent to the Internet Community for assistance on the
East Timor problem has generated an enormous response.
The e-mail campaign is working. Please note that the mailboxes at the
UN are filled and messages are now bouncing. If your message bounces
just wait 24 hours and send it again.
I will include all of the e-mail addresses on the pages at:
http://www.bestnet.org/~jwalker/et.htm
I have also been informed that some messages sent to various US
Senators are now bouncing also as the mailboxes become filled.
There are 22,000 Australian and 7,000 US troops presently taking
part in Operation Crocodile 99 in Australia. These troops could
be re-tasked for use in East Timor immediately.
If you are wondering why the US is so reluctant to get involved see:
Why is East Timor so Important?
America's Grand Strategy and the Role of the Indonesian Army.
at http://www.bestnet.org/~jwalker/et.htm
Please take a moment and record your vote in the on-line poll while you
are there.
John Walker
Publisher
CSS Internet News
On-line Learning Series of Courses
http://www.bestnet.org/~jwalker/course.htm
Member: Association for International Business
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
_/ _/
_/ John S. Walker _/
_/ Publisher, CSS Internet News (tm) _/
_/ (Internet Training and Research) _/
_/ PO Box 57247, Jackson Stn., _/
_/ Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, L8P 4X1 _/
_/ Email jwalker@hwcn.org _/
_/ http://www.bestnet.org/~jwalker _/
_/ _/
_/ "To Teach is to touch a life forever" _/
_/ On the Web one touch can reach so far! _/
_/ _/
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 13:49:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com>
Subject: [netz] Dispute about role of government in Internet's history
Following is a post and my response from the Community memory mailing
list.
The original post came from another list.
A reporter recently called me and asked me what are the disputes
in Internet history and was interested to hear about this exchange.
Ronda
Bob Bickford <rab@WELL.COM>
BB>This was posted on another list which I read. With the author's permission,
BB>I am forwarding it here. I generally agree with what he ways. {grin}
>.....rab
--BEGIN-QUOTE---------------------------------------------------------
I wonder who Tim May is quoting in this early part of his response?
And where was the original post?
>Date: 9 Sep 1999 11:34:05 -0600
>From: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>
>Subject: DARPA Considered Unnecessary
>>>DARPA funding for ARPANET, etc. used a different approach. Rather than
>>>mandating specification before implementation of protocols designed by
>>>properly-constituted international committees (OSI), it funded competent
>>>researchers and mostly gave them their head to determine appropriate
>>>directions by actually trying things.
>
>>>This approach was rare. Most countries that dabbled in network funding
>>>went the other way, of mandating things that didn't work: EU, most
>>>European governments, etc.
>>ARPA/DARPA is the darling example always cited as the rationale for "good"
>>government funding. The funding _did_ work. (Caveat about my bias: my first
>>ARPANet account was around 1973.)
The point here that is missed is that ARPA's Information Processing
Techniquest Office (IPTO) didn't just *fund* researchers. It was
a component and important part of the research paradigm.
That is well hidden,however, by those who talk about ARPA funding.
It makes it seem as if it is only a way of giving money to researchers.
But actually ARPA/IPTO was a component and crucial part of the
computer science research community, and the leadership of IPTO
was for an important period of time in IPTO's lifetime a crucial
part of the research community.
My recent paper on IPTO begins to document this.
See http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/arpa_ipto.txt
>>Would networks and user interfaces and other such things have advanced as
>>much without DARPA funding?
>>I think so. And John McCarthy even wrote an article about 15 or so years
>>ago explicating just this point, and even claiming that probably we would
>>have a _better_ network model, more akin to the point-to-point phone model
>>than the "spoke and hub" model championed by the ARPANet.
Not much of an argument by the writer of this post. Just that he
thinks so. This leaves out that JCR Licklider was the guiding
force at ARPA/IPTO making time sharing (which was McCarthy's idea)
a reality by the way he built a community of computer science
researchers, who advised him in turn on what he was doing
and which he called the Intergalactic network.
See http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/internet.txt
Also the ARPANET was the result of the work done by IPTO
And the Internet the next advance, *not* the same as the
packet switching advance of the ARPANET.
While the ARPANET was one network controlled as a network,
the Internet is built on the model of the intercommunication
of diverse packet switching networks.
The Internet model made it possible to scale as it welcomed
diverse networks under the open architecture principle
developed by Bob Kahn, then at ARPA/IPTO.
All were welcomed to become part of the Internet.
Also a lot of the important early work developing the Internet
was done out of the IPT office itself by the program manager
or director etc.
>>Technology was advancing relentlessly, and, by the way, it was not being
>>driven by ARPA or DARPA funding in any significant way.
It's easy to make such statements without giving any evidence
to back them up.
The batch processing mode of computers was the mode in 1962 and would
have continued to be the mode for a number of years if not for
ARPA/IPTO's research work developing time sharing and interactive
computing.
And it wasn't that any commercial entities were out to put in the
millions of dollars and years of research work and support of
researchers that was needed to develop packet switching through
the ARPANET research, nor the open architecture principle
and protocol development that made the Internet a reality.
It took 10 years from 1973 from the date that Kahn and Cerf
designed the protocol for internetworking, TCP as it was then
called, till the cutover to TCP/IP on the ARPANET in January 1983.
This wasn't the kind of research that industry was doing or would
do.
So May's comments are denying the need for both computer science
researchers and for a government role in that research.
And that would leave us now with batch processing and without
Unix
Usenet
packet switching
the Internet
>>(I joined Intel in 1974, working in Technology Development, and I can
>>assure you all that neither memory chips nor microprocessors nor the early
>>personal computers were affected in any noticeable way by what DARPA at
>>that time was doing. I sometimes see claims that VLSI was pioneered by
>>DARPA, or that computer-aided design was invented by Mead and Conway, and
>>so on. Just ain't so.)
How strange. By 1974 ARPA/IPTO had accomplished a revolution in
the form of computing
ARPA/IPTO started in 1962.
And it did its work well.
Also I have only read a bit about VLSI, but as I understand it
each chip manufacturer had its own proprietary designs and VSLI
took on that challenged and opened up the process.
And the Information Science Institute (ISI) became a center for
the work in this field.
>>Don't get me wrong. I think what DARPA threw money at was mostly money
>>well-spent. Ditto for what Xerox PARC was spending (sometimes with links to
>>DARPA projects).
But it wasn't that ARPA/IPTO was a question of "throwing money".
It was a crucial part of a computer science research community.
>>But many people have been drawing overbroad conclusions about the effects
>>DARPA had. It is almost certain that the pace of technological development
What are these overbroad conclusions?
ARPA/IPTO fundamentally changed the computer science paradigm.
Also companies like Sun etc wouldn't exist.
>>would have been about the same had DARPA never existed. The same applies,
>>by the way, for other players, including Intel, Microsoft, Apple, etc.
Well Microsoft and Apple in fact are the product of work done
by Kemeny creating basic as part of the Dartmouth Time Sharing
system.
And DOS by Microsoft is a beneficiary of the work done developing
time sharing and then CTSS and MULTICS and its beneficiary UNIX.
And the work on time sharing and CTSS was the result of ARPA/IPTO's
work.
The programming languages for the personal computer were the offspring
of the programming language developed for time sharing systems like
Kemeny's DTSS.
>>The actual history would have been different, obviously. In some ways less
>>progress, in some ways more progress. But there was a certain inexorability
>>about most of the technological developments. Other companies would have
>>introduced much the same products.
No the paradigm was fundamentally changed.
And the participatory role of users on the Internet is *not* something
that industry seems to recognize as important as they seem to
equate computer users or users on the Internet as customers.
The whole concept of Netizens is a development in fact of
the computer - human relationship that Wiener (Norbert Wiener)
recognized was the crucial relationship to be explored as
part of his work on Cybernetics.
So it isn't that the technology is rushing ahead at all, nor that
industry, at least in the computer field, is the great creator
of the future.
It is that the development of computer science and of cybernetic
science has led to the ability to make certain leaps and
the computer science research community which was developed
as part of ARPA/IPTO was able to have both the vision and the
ability to develop the science that has made these technological
developments a reality.
>>In summary, I'm not dissing DARPA, just questioning the notion that
>>DARPA-like funding is needed.
The vision and research that ARPA/IPTO carried out is needed more
than ever. And we need to learn the lessons from these developments
*not* deny that they were made.
>>- --Tim May
Ronda
ronda@ais.org
- -----------------
Netizens: On the History and Impact
of Usenet and the Internet
Published by IEEE Computer Society Press
ISBN # 0-8186-7706-6
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/
______________________________________________________________________
Posted by David S. Bennahum (davidsol@panix.com)
Moderator: Community Memory
http://memex.org/community-memory.html
A CPSR Project -- http://www.cpsr.org -- cpsr@cpsr.org
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______________________________________________________________________
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 16:22:16 -0700
From: gds@best.com (Greg Skinner)
Subject: [netz] NET LOSS- Government, Technology and Economics of Community- Ebook on the Web (fwd)
I got this from the Community Memory list. More info at
http://memex.org/community-memory.html
NEW BOOK ON THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS OF THE INTERNET,
PUBLISHED ON THE NET AT:
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~newman/
+==============================================================
NET LOSS:
GOVERNMENT, TECHNOLOGY AND THE
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF COMMUNITY IN THE AGE OF THE INTERNET
===============================================================
By Nathan Newman, Ph.D.UC-Berkeley
Contact at: nathan.newman@yale.edu
Where does technology like the Internet come from? Why is it so
identified with specific regions like Silicon Valley? Why does new
technology seem so associated in the public mind with both personal
empowerment for some people and economic insecurity and growing
powerlessness for others? And what is the best government policy for
promoting technology and equal access in the new economy?
What confuses all these questions is the dynamic interaction
between government, technology and the regions that are shaped
and in turn reshape both technology and economic policy alliances.
And nowhere has this dynamic been more confusing than in the case
of the Internet, a technology directly planned and funded for decades
by national government in Washington, DC, yet associated most in
the public mind with garage startups in Silicon Valley. Even as
technology companies have digested billions of dollars in technology
subsidies from the government, we hear new words like
"cyberlibertarianism" coined by Internet enthusiasts.
This book, NET LOSS: GOVERNMENT, TECHNOLOGY AND THE POLITICAL
ECONOMY OF COMMUNITY IN THE AGE OF INTERNET helps make sense of this
historical and ideological jumble. It highlights the process by which
government guided the creation of the Internet and the regions most
associated with the technology, even as the forces unleashed by the
Internet have in turn reshaped and constricted government technology
policy to the detriment of the broader public.
OVERVIEW
The Internet has emerged as the focus for much of the strongest
hype and substance in debates on the new economy. It has become
the defining economic event of the end of the 20th century - a fact
reflected by the obsessive media attention and to the raw economic
explosion of companies associated with it.
The Internet is seen as the metaphor, even the embodiment, of
the new information age, of a post-industrial economy, and of a new
paradigm in workplace and company organization. Information in this
view, rather than raw materials, have become the substance of commerce
and the Internet is the highway of the new era.
Most strikingly, the Internet is seen as the herald of the
globalization of the economy and the triumph of a deregulated
marketplace. In this vision, the economics of place have given way
to telecommuting, global production and just-in-time delivery of
goods and information from all points on the globe. In such a world,
economic regions become an oxymoron as the economy becomes a matter
of bits and e-mail in cyberspace, not transit and meetings in local
space. The "Third Wave" in this scenario leaves economic regions
as the archaic leftovers of the industrial age. Governments, those
stalwart institutions tied to such geography, become impotent and
unimportant in this new global information society. Yet on the face
of it, it's nonsensical to argue that new information technologies
like the Internet show the irrelevancy of national governments and
economies.
The Internet is one of the crowning achievements of central
government in the last few decades--planned over decades, funded
by a series of federal agencies, and overseen by a national network
of experts. And its success is not merely an exemplar of technical
achievement but is also an exemplar of the efficiency of government
planning over purely private economic development. In the absence
of the open standards of the Internet developed and promoted by the
federal government, almost all analysts admit that the private vision
of toll road information services promoted by industry would not have
created the surge of explosive economic innovation we are currently
seeing around the Internet. It is only with the success of the
Internet (and the profits to be made) that industry is now decrying
the interference of government in information access.
The most striking counter to the vision of global placelessness
is the very existence of Silicon Valley, the region most associated
with the rise of the Internet. If any region were to collapse on
the wave of cyber-communication, it would be Northern California's
"hotwired" Silicon Valley. Contrary to what some might expect,
Silicon Valley not only survives but is thriving, expanding and
even consolidating its role as the geographic focus of a supposedly
geography-free revolution. From network router companies like 3Com
to Web tool makers like Netscape to the multimedia upstarts of San
Francisco's "multimedia gulch", new companies in Northern California
seem to be refusing to let geography die its proper death.
The simplest connection between government policy and regional
strength in places like Silicon Valley is that the government itself
designed its technology policy to favor small regional companies,
which in turn favored the emergence of regions like Silicon Valley
where small firms without bottomless corporate resources could
complement each other with services and products.
The subtlety is in the range of policy tools used by the
government in promoting such small-firm innovation, including funding
university research that could easily spin-off new firms, requiring
second sources for defense contracts, promoting public technology
standards with which small firms could cheaply integrate new products,
and supporting aggressive public purchasing regimes to favor desired
technology. Silicon Valley firms that would be at the heart of its
commercialization, such as Sun, Cisco and Oracle had all gotten their
start based largely on selling to government agencies. Or, as in the
case of Netscape, such firms would raid the talent of the government
centers that built the Internet to commercialize government-created
software like the Mosaic web browser and servers.
In evaluating the role of regional economies, then, it is
critical to see them not as initiators but respondents to national
and global economic policies. All of these policies both encouraged
innovation and a technology regime favoring smaller firms in specific
geographic spaces. But at a deeper level, the vibrancy of the Silicon
Valley regional economy is not in defiance of globalizing trends
due to the Internet but that regional strength was in many ways the
precondition for the triumph of the Internet.
Fundamental technological change like the Internet requires
more than the introduction of new products; it requires fundamental
transformations in a whole array of mutually supporting institutions,
goods, services and standards that must all advance together. While
this can happen between people and companies in different places,
the organic trust and interaction of those living in the same region
has always been a key factor in such broad-based technological
advancement, whether in the car industry in Detroit or in the
financial districts of Wall Street.
But the end product of this kind of technology policy is not
just new technology but a reshaping of politics governing the economy,
first in shaping the local economic spaces directly targeted by
government policy, then, as technologies like the Internet take on
national significance, in reshaping national policies themselves.
Even as outside federal investment was the basis for regional
expansion, there have subsequently appeared internal economic dynamics
that are critical to how the economy functions in the context of the
new information-based technology, especially in its relationship to
regional politics and the more general global politics of control of
an industry.
The very "lock-in" of regional dominance raises the issue of
what regions do to either hold onto that dominance or what they fail
to do that may let such an advantage fade away. As critically, the
new dynamics of regional economics highlight who has power within
such regions and who loses out as regional economies change under
the impact of technology. As Internet commerce took off, its business
leaders increasingly fought any government policy seeking expanded
access for the broader public for fear that would undercut business
opportunities.
Even when sharing physical geography, companies have found
increasing need for new political and social relationships in the form
of business-to-business consortia in order to regularize technology
exchange and get political agreement on standards. This in turn has
reshaped local politics in places like Northern California in ways
that link elite professionals together in a new kind of suburban
"gated community" of innovation. Especially as the federal government
withdrew from coordination of Internet standards, innovation in places
like Silicon Valley was increasingly tied to global technological
needs. However, this elite version of cooperation leaves little need
for serious concessions to the needs of non-elite workers in a region.
Despite the ode to "small business" as the engine of jobs, such
globally-oriented startup companies are tied to global corporate
policies that end up promoting overall policies that increase
inequality within regions. As wages rose in the Silicon Valley areas,
housing and other costs rose even faster for the average workers, just
as poverty rose rather than fell with the overall prosperity of the
region. For most workers, the Silicon Valley boom has given little
sense of security but rather, with the rise of temporary agencies and
the rise of contingent employment for as much as 40% of workers, a
sense of the ephemerality of growth. Even as elite engineers invest
the dividends of IPOs for their long-term security, other workers
watch continual outsourcing of lower-end jobs erode any sense of
stability.
The Internet itself is much like the utility networks of the
past where great fortunes were made and political battles were fought
to assure the widest possible access. Integrated public utility
networks and cross-class growth coalitions had defined the social
space in which Progressive reformers in the early part of this century
had built modern local government in line with regional economic
management goals. However, as the Internet industry has built its
"gated community" and elite economic networks selectively connect rich
suburbs and professional urban enclaves across the globe with the most
advanced technology, poorer communities and urban sections have been
left with little more than virtual dirt roads.
We are seeing new ideologies of privatization and corporate
servicing by local governments that end up doing little or nothing
for the general population. Instead, cities and towns are pitted
against each other in an endless competition to spend what little
resources they have serving those with the most capital, while eroding
democracy to make government services one more set of amenities that
corporations choose from in conducting branch site selections.
At the most basic level, the invisible regional geography of
communication serves to polarize already existing economic and racial
divides as cities rush to support business with public networking
goods. Technology investments in schools end up overwhelmingly in the
hands of more privileged communities as business finds concentrated
support for schools in their suburban enclaves a more cost-efficient
approach than general revenues for all schools.
And just as networking has eroding firm barriers separating
firm from firm, the Internet is helping to blur the lines between
government and business. Global firms scoop government contract
bids off the Net as local services become merely part of the business
plan of multinational corporations. Conversely, government services
respond ever more precisely to the demands of those businesses
operating in the region, whether in expediting construction permits
electronically or the wholesale marketing of government data for the
benefit of firms doing business in the area. At best we see local
governments seeking to extract small economic concessions for the
wholesale benefits they deliver in their desperate recruitment of
business.
In outlining the emergence of the Internet, my book illustrates
the way government shapes new technologies and regions while in
turn being itself reshaped by the new economic forces unleashed.
This has meant the rise of cyberbusinesses pushing for government
to cede control its management in favor of private profits, often
at the expense of both the needs of the technology and of equity
in local and national economies. If there is a saving grace to this
grim trajectory, it is the hint of new organizing by community groups
in creating their own global alliances to begin to even up the global
power balance. It is this new system of local community organizing
combined with global networking that is defining the ongoing politics
of the new global economy.
BACKGROUND OF THE AUTHOR
My goal in writing this book was to address many broader social
and economic issues often ignored in the hype around discussions of
the Internet. It is informed by many of the best economic analyses
of technology, combined with my own expertise as a policy advocate
around the new technology. The goal is to present a sober, contrarian
analysis of the overlooked economic and sociological roots of the
Internet revolution and its grimmer implications for the economic
have-nots left out of its revolution.
This ebook manuscript is based on a Ph.D. dissertation approved
by the Sociology department at the University of California at
Berkeley in 1998. I was a Jacob Javits Fellow at Berkeley from 1990
to 1991 and a National Science Foundation Fellow from 1991 to 1994. From
1992 to 1996, I was co-director of UC-Berkeley's Center for Community
Economic Research (CCER) where a major project was analysis and policy
work tied to the emerging Internet. Part of our work was training
community non-profits and union members in use of the new technology
which contributed immensely to the books insights on the disparity in
technology resources emerging in the new economy. This built on my
own personal history before graduate school as a union organizer and
policy advocate.
I published a number of articles and working papers on these
technology issues at CCER, partially incorporated in the manuscript.
The working paper I produced back in 1995 on the rising threat of
Internet commerce to local sales taxes was the first major report
highlighting this danger and received national media coverage,
including republication in State Tax Notes and a revised version
published in the April 1996 Technology Review at MIT. I was also
an invited speaker at the annual convention of the California
State Association of Counties and at the Association of Bay Area
Governments.
From 1997 to 1999, I was Project Director at NetAction, a
non-profit technology policy organization where I wrote extensively
on the issue of technology and the threat Microsoft has posed for open
standards on the Internet. In January 1998, I was asked to testify
at a special California state legislative hearing on the future of
technology networking in the state university system. In my roles
at both CCER and NetAction, I have been interviewed by publications
including The New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, The
Nation, CNET's News.Com, WiredNews and have appeared on C-SPAN and on
CNet's The Web television show.
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End of Netizens-Digest V1 #338
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