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Netizens-Digest Volume 1 Number 439
Netizens-Digest Saturday, March 22 2003 Volume 01 : Number 439
Netizens Association Discussion List Digest
In this issue:
Re[3]: [netz] Free speech (was NETIZENS...)
Re: [netz] Netizens and Public Health (was free spech)
[netz] [IP] War News: Go Beyond the Usual Suspects (fwd)
[netz] [IP] War News: Go Beyond the Usual Suspects (fwd)
Re: [netz] [IP] War News: Go Beyond the Usual Suspects (fwd)
Re: [netz] [IP] War News: Go Beyond the Usual Suspects (fwd)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 12:12:14 +0100
From: Dan Duris <dusoft@staznosti.sk>
Subject: Re[3]: [netz] Free speech (was NETIZENS...)
HCB> Let me clarify. There is no common basis of government; it is
HCB> decentralized. Problems occur in many directions.
Sorry to make it short, but I am busy with prearing one big event here
and will reply you back on Sunday or later. Your email touched very
interesting topic.
dan
- --------------------------
email: dusoft@staznosti.sk
ICQ: 17932727
*- "turn on, tune in, drop out." timothy leary -*
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 06:14:54 EST
From: AGENTKUENSTLER@aol.com
Subject: Re: [netz] Netizens and Public Health (was free spech)
- --part1_24.3a972796.2bad9fae_boundary
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
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In a message dated 3/21/03 9:21:58 AM Eastern Standard Time,
lgd1@columbia.edu writes:
...
> I think our homage to them has something to do
> with the spirit of netizens because our list, I think is composed of well
> meaning
> human beings and every once in a while I think we can take a small break
> from the
> mission and technicalities and enjoy a good and constructive chat. I think
> the
> brave Tuskegee chaps deserve it. I am glad you visited Cuba and enjoyed the
> food, I
> hope my fellow cubans are able to have better and affordable access to the
> net and
> I'd like to see many of them join our list and become netizens.
> Take care,
> Lou D.
>
I agree, we are all well-meaning. A good anecdote every now and then is not
bad. Everyone stay safe.
Larry
- --part1_24.3a972796.2bad9fae_boundary
Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
<HTML><FONT FACE=3Darial,helvetica><FONT SIZE=3D2 FAMILY=3D"SANSSERIF" FACE=
=3D"Arial" LANG=3D"0">In a message dated 3/21/03 9:21:58 AM Eastern Standard=
Time, lgd1@columbia.edu writes:<BR>
<BR>
...<BR>
<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=3DCITE style=3D"BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT=
: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">I think our homage to them has=20=
something to do<BR>
with the spirit of netizens because our list, I think is composed of w=
ell meaning<BR>
human beings and every once in a while I think we can take a small break fro=
m the<BR>
mission and technicalities and enjoy a good and constructive chat. I think t=
he<BR>
brave Tuskegee chaps deserve it. I am glad you visited Cuba and enjoyed the=20=
food, I<BR>
hope my fellow cubans are able to have better and affordable access to the n=
et and<BR>
I'd like to see many of them join our list and become netizens.<BR>
Take care,<BR>
Lou D.<BR>
</BLOCKQUOTE><BR>
<BR>
I agree, we are all well-meaning. A good anecdote every now and then i=
s not bad. Everyone stay safe.<BR>
<BR>
Larry</FONT></HTML>
- --part1_24.3a972796.2bad9fae_boundary--
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 08:46:25 -0500 (EST)
From: Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com>
Subject: [netz] [IP] War News: Go Beyond the Usual Suspects (fwd)
In the next email I send the list, I am sending an article that appeared
on another mailing list I am on. I thought it is helpful to see that
the ability of the netizen to spread the real news is critical in what is
happening today in Iraq and here at home.
It is interesting that the reporter Dan Gilmour says that the
variety of views of the IP list is helpful to him. However,
until recently the moderator of the list would not post what
I sent him most often. With the recent developments with the
US bombing Iraq, he has posted my posts on IP. It is good to see
that the moderator of the list is being encouraged to present
the spectrum of information and views.
The importance of the Internet for providing for the discussion
and debate on the U.S. government attack on Iraq is greater than
ever.
It would be valuable for people to share sites they know
of online where there is broadranging discussion of what
is happening and where there is the exchange of information
and views.
We should figure out how the netizens list can be helpful in
the very challenging times.
Sorry I haven't been able to keep up with the recent debate
on the list. It has been hard trying to keep up with everything
just now. I went to the anti war march in Times Square on
Wednesday and wrote something that appeared in Telepolis.
In case people are interested, the url is
http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/co/14441/1.html
Ronda
P.S. There is another source, a newspaper I found that had a
wonderful editorial"Netizens Unite" and then had a large number
of responses posted online to the editorial. When I have time I
will send the url. I think this newspaper did indeed help to make it
possible for netizens to unite by providing a way for people to
discuss and examine the principles for netizens in a trying situation
like the one we find ourselves in today.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 08:48:00 -0500 (EST)
From: Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com>
Subject: [netz] [IP] War News: Go Beyond the Usual Suspects (fwd)
Here is the article from the IP Mailing list that I referred
to in my last post to the list.
Ronda
- ------ Forwarded Message
From: Dan Gillmor <dgillmor@sjmercury.com>
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 12:38:48 -0800
To: Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>
Subject: Fyi
Dave, we posted my Sunday column early. May be relevant to your readers.
Definitely relevant to you, as you get a mention...
http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/000875.shtml
- ------ End of Forwarded Message
War News: Go Beyond the Usual Suspects
posted by Dan Gillmor 12:14 PM
permanent link to this item
What follows is this Sunday's column. I've gotten permission to post it
early, because it feels timely.
In the 1991 Gulf War, the American public was fed an a homogenized version
of reality. The news consisted of the same sound bites, presidential
declarations, Pentagon briefings, etc. -- essentially identical information
no matter what the media source.
In the first 24 hours of the latest Gulf War, the same situation prevailed
for the vast majority of Americans. This time around, however, a minority --
but a growing one -- had learned a lesson from the aftermath of the Sept. 11
attacks. They had a robust online alternative. The World Wide Web, e-mail
lists and other online sources offered content with context and nuance.
Maybe you didn't have time at the start of this war to check out the
alternatives. In coming weeks and months, please make the time.
The amount of information this time is going to be overwhelming. Hundreds of
professional journalists are in the Middle East covering the events, and the
Web gives us access to most of what they're going to tell us.
Many are ''embedded'' in combat units. They'll provide all manner of
on-the-ground reports, albeit censored, using modern communications
technology that will shock us with its immediacy.
Some of the coverage will come from media that do not parrot the U.S.
government's view of the conflict. In the weeks leading up to the war, when
much of the American press dismissively covered internal dissent and mocked
the rest of the world's misgivings as weak-kneed whining, many people
started looking to British media for the kind of information and opinions
they weren't finding here.
Several weeks ago, the London Observer broke a story of U.S. spying on the
United Nations delegations of Security Council members. It quoted a
memorandum by a National Security Agency official. The U.S. media
organizations that bothered to cover the story downplayed it, but it was big
news elsewhere -- and on the Web.
The rise of the passionate amateur, meanwhile, has given us valuable new
insights. Nowhere is that more true than in weblogs and other kinds of
personal media that transcend the soapbox genre. Collectively, they expand
the marketplace of ideas.
Some webloggers serve a clearinghouse function, becoming a collaborative
filter and conversation. They sort through the journalism, professional and
amateur, and point the rest of us to the most interesting coverage.
I also subscribe to a number of mailing lists where other subscribers do
much the same thing. They spot interesting new coverage, and tell everyone
else on the list. I'm a big fan of Dave Farber and his ³Interesting People²
list; Farber's readers tell him about useful material and he tells everyone
else.
The soapboxes have their own unique value. These are political weblogs that
deal mostly with policy issues, with the war and international politics at
the top of the current agenda. Sometimes they're the classic ''sound and
fury, signifying nothing,'' but the best force us to reconsider our own
biases. I frequently disagree with Glenn Reynolds, but his postings are
always relevant, often enlightening.
The source and quality of information are as important online as in
traditional media, but more difficult to verify in some cases. As I write
this, meanwhile, there's a serious discussion online about the bona fides of
a weblogger who says he's in Baghdad, telling us how things look to an Iraqi
citizen. We're developing new hierarchies of trust for this new medium, just
as we have for the traditional publications and broadcasts.
I don't know if the most deeply interactive nature of the Net will emerge
fully in this war, not the way it will when information technology and
networks are even more pervasive than they are today. We'll get a hint of it
as on-the-ground journalists with fancy portable telecommunications gear
give us their perspectives.
If you want to be informed, roam widely. Watch and read things that support
your own beliefs. Then look for commentary and data that don't. It's all out
there.
The need for a better-informed citizenry has never been greater, not in an
era of such pivotal changes and world-shaping decisions. Yet there has
rarely been such prevailing shallowness in public discourse.
Our business and political leaders know that reality is an infinite palette
of grays, not starkly black and white. We know that, too, because we deal
with those subtleties in your everyday life. Yet our leaders -- and, yes,
major elements of the mass media -- reduce complex issues to simplistic
slogans. Why do we go along with this?
I'm not asking you to change your mind on fundamental issues. But I implore
you to use these new tools to keep it ajar.
- -------------------------------------
Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 09:45:57 -0500
From: "Howard C. Berkowitz" <hcb@gettcomm.com>
Subject: Re: [netz] [IP] War News: Go Beyond the Usual Suspects (fwd)
>In the next email I send the list, I am sending an article that appeared
>on another mailing list I am on. I thought it is helpful to see that
>the ability of the netizen to spread the real news is critical in what is
>happening today in Iraq and here at home.
>
>It is interesting that the reporter Dan Gilmour says that the
>variety of views of the IP list is helpful to him. However,
>until recently the moderator of the list would not post what
>I sent him most often. With the recent developments with the
>US bombing Iraq, he has posted my posts on IP. It is good to see
>that the moderator of the list is being encouraged to present
>the spectrum of information and views.
>
>The importance of the Internet for providing for the discussion
>and debate on the U.S. government attack on Iraq is greater than
>ever.
Now, if you wanted to offer simple lists of URLs of examples of
different forms of Internet usage, whether it were the penguins
resisting the attack of walruses, the Iraqi situation, the
suppression of "hate speech," etc., that might be useful.
But I seriously question if it is useful to the unique perspective of
Netizens if the content of a post deals primarily with a general
policy issue and only peripherally involves network-enabled policy
input by citizens. Again and again, I have refrained from commenting
on things like Iraq, globalization, etc., because I ask myself: is
there something important to be learned here about a specific way to
use communications, or is it merely saying people are fed up with
some situation and "there ought to be some way to use the net to
help."
Fundamentally, the question to be asked in terms of relevance here:
is the posting something that encourages specific proposals and
actual experience with network-enabled political communications? Or
is it something that advances a particular political agenda, whether
it be the Broederbund, the Pink Coalition, the Council on Foreign
Relations/Trilateral Commission/Bilderberg Group and the aluminum
foil industry, Jacques Chirac, George W. Bush, Saddam Hussein,
Vladimir Putin, Bob Barr or Tom Daschle?
Ronda, I don't know if you can characterize your own political
beliefs into a label. "Progressive activist" comes to mind, but I
hesitate to apply any label because I really don't know what it
means. I suspect you and I would agree on some issues and some means
of affecting the decisionmaking process, but have some significant
disagreements on other issues and how far to move from a model of
republican democracy.
As to the latter, and I am trying to keep this in a control theory
standpoint, I believe that a trustworthy, fair, humane government has
deliberate delays -- perhaps even inefficiencies -- built into it.
Not to have these present is to risk very-short-term events from
driving events, or indeed driving the system into oscillation.
Reflective and wise policy gets lost in sound bites.
I know I have trouble labeling myself--as close as I can get, I am an
"active centrist" (i.e., often a coalition builder) with extremely
strong interest in maximizing freedom and accuracy of information.
To me, there are very few kinds of information that should ever be
suppressed. There are grounds for helping parents control
information access by young children. There is a very small area
where the details of governmental operations require security, but
not the policy discussion surrounding it.
As an example of the latter, I am thoroughly in favor of the
discussion of the policy aspects of nuclear weapons, which certainly
includes the effect of weapons, the budget, the general use strategy,
etc. While, however, I personally found Howard Morland's discussion
in _The Secret that Exploded_ (also called the "Progressive Case) of
the key engineering principle of a thermonuclear bomb
(plasma-mediated radiation pressure), a sober view says that
principle would better have been kept classified. I am well versed
in biological warfare, but I believe there can be a complete policy
debate without revealing engineering details of weaponization.
I see value in a free market, but only one that is free from fraud
and manipulation. I definitely see some things that cannot be done by
voluntary, free-market mechanisms.
So my goal is to see how network technologies could enable some of
these goals. I'm not in the slightest hesitant to discuss my views on
such things as the specifics of the intervention in Iraq, but in
other venues. I'm probably happiest in those venues when my positions
both irritate the extremists at both ends of the discussion, yet get
some consensus they represent feasible solutions.
>
>It would be valuable for people to share sites they know
>of online where there is broadranging discussion of what
>is happening and where there is the exchange of information
>and views.
>
>We should figure out how the netizens list can be helpful in
>the very challenging times.
>
Ronda, I'm a diabetic. If I wait to manage my disease until I'm in a
trying situation like diabetic coma or insulin shock, I've failed and
am at major risk. I don't want to deal with how to apply netizenship
in very challenging times -- I want to figure out how it can help
avoid the next time of unpleasant challenge.
Bear with me through a possibly obscure but relevant historical
reference. At the start of WWII, the average Japanese or German
combat pilot was far technically superior than his allied
counterpart. Yet, in the long view of the war, especially in the
Pacific, the Axis lost in large part due to shortages of skilled
pilots.
The basic reason was that the Axis kept successful fighters fighting
for short-term victories. The US policy, however, was to rotate
successful fighters back to the home bases, to pass on their
experience to the next generation of pilots, improve themselves for
such things as unit command rather than individual combat, and to
give needed rest so they could continue for a longer time without
mental or physical exhaustion.
Concentrating on Netizenship with respect to current crises is the
equivalent of how the Japanese squandered the incredibly talented
prewar graduates of the Misty Lagoon naval training center.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 09:54:51 -0500
From: "Howard C. Berkowitz" <hcb@gettcomm.com>
Subject: Re: [netz] [IP] War News: Go Beyond the Usual Suspects (fwd)
>Here is the article from the IP Mailing list that I referred
>to in my last post to the list.
>
>Ronda
>
>------ Forwarded Message
>From: Dan Gillmor <dgillmor@sjmercury.com>
>Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 12:38:48 -0800
>To: Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>
>Subject: Fyi
>
>Dave, we posted my Sunday column early. May be relevant to your readers.
>Definitely relevant to you, as you get a mention...
>
>http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/000875.shtml
>
>
>------ End of Forwarded Message
>
>War News: Go Beyond the Usual Suspects
>* posted by Dan Gillmor 12:14 PM
>* permanent link to this item
>
>
>What follows is this Sunday's column. I've gotten permission to post it
>early, because it feels timely.
>
>
>In the 1991 Gulf War, the American public was fed an a homogenized version
>of reality. The news consisted of the same sound bites, presidential
>declarations, Pentagon briefings, etc. -- essentially identical information
>no matter what the media source.
>
>In the first 24 hours of the latest Gulf War, the same situation prevailed
>for the vast majority of Americans. This time around, however, a minority --
>but a growing one -- had learned a lesson from the aftermath of the Sept. 11
>attacks. They had a robust online alternative. The World Wide Web, e-mail
>lists and other online sources offered content with context and nuance.
>
>Maybe you didn't have time at the start of this war to check out the
>alternatives. In coming weeks and months, please make the time.
>
>The amount of information this time is going to be overwhelming. Hundreds of
>professional journalists are in the Middle East covering the events, and the
>Web gives us access to most of what they're going to tell us.
>
>Many are ''embedded'' in combat units. They'll provide all manner of
>on-the-ground reports, albeit censored, using modern communications
>technology that will shock us with its immediacy.
As some of you know, I'm formally trained as a strategic intelligence
analyst. Part of the mindset that must be mastered to be any good at
that is to recognize that no one source is definitive.
There is a term of art, "the intelligence mosaic." Even the most
heavily censored report may contain that one stray bit of color that
connects scattered tiles and finally gives the correct picture.
One consideration may be less to worry about censorship of
information into the formation of that mosaic, than using the net
collaboratively to build and share a mosaic.
>
>
>The rise of the passionate amateur, meanwhile, has given us valuable new
>insights. Nowhere is that more true than in weblogs and other kinds of
>personal media that transcend the soapbox genre. Collectively, they expand
>the marketplace of ideas.
And this is not incongruent with the principle of collaborative
analysis I described below. I find it interesting, however, that some
of the "passionate amateurs" do not consider some of the methods of
the information analysis professional, methods that are carefully
dispassionate and also with safeguards against errors. Perhaps a
better term than "safeguard against error" is "managed error". Other
than at the highest policy summary level, intelligence reporting
usually comes with a systematic label of the overall reliability
experience with a source, and an estimate of the reliability of a
particular report. You can, for example, have an "A-5", a report from
an utterly trusted source that can be independently verified as
false, or an "F-1", a report from a known mercenary triple agent that
has been confirmed as true.
>
>Some webloggers serve a clearinghouse function, becoming a collaborative
>filter and conversation. They sort through the journalism, professional and
>amateur, and point the rest of us to the most interesting coverage.
I am not suggesting that every individual goes through the quite
detailed process of analysis. But I commend it as a supplementary
technique to be used, and encourage the community to start
establishing reliability records for alternate sources.
>
>The soapboxes have their own unique value. These are political weblogs that
>deal mostly with policy issues, with the war and international politics at
>the top of the current agenda. Sometimes they're the classic ''sound and
>fury, signifying nothing,'' but the best force us to reconsider our own
>biases. I frequently disagree with Glenn Reynolds, but his postings are
>always relevant, often enlightening.
>
>The source and quality of information are as important online as in
>traditional media, but more difficult to verify in some cases.
The sad thing, however, is that there is a whole discipline of
verification that is very little known. In no way is it glamorous.
>As I write
>this, meanwhile, there's a serious discussion online about the bona fides of
>a weblogger who says he's in Baghdad, telling us how things look to an Iraqi
>citizen. We're developing new hierarchies of trust for this new medium, just
>as we have for the traditional publications and broadcasts.
>
>I don't know if the most deeply interactive nature of the Net will emerge
>fully in this war, not the way it will when information technology and
>networks are even more pervasive than they are today. We'll get a hint of it
>as on-the-ground journalists with fancy portable telecommunications gear
>give us their perspectives.
>
>If you want to be informed, roam widely. Watch and read things that support
>your own beliefs. Then look for commentary and data that don't. It's all out
>there.
>
>The need for a better-informed citizenry has never been greater, not in an
>era of such pivotal changes and world-shaping decisions. Yet there has
>rarely been such prevailing shallowness in public discourse.
>
>Our business and political leaders know that reality is an infinite palette
>of grays, not starkly black and white. We know that, too, because we deal
>with those subtleties in your everyday life. Yet our leaders -- and, yes,
>major elements of the mass media -- reduce complex issues to simplistic
>slogans. Why do we go along with this?
>
>I'm not asking you to change your mind on fundamental issues. But I implore
>you to use these new tools to keep it ajar.
>
>-------------------------------------
>Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
------------------------------
End of Netizens-Digest V1 #439
******************************
