IP: Re: a 'sound" byte on culture

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 13:32:09 -0800
To: Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>
From: jwarren () well com (Jim Warren)




>    But I suspect that an uncomfortably large segment of the public is
>    also made uneasy by rapid technological developments.  They sense,
>    possibly correctly, that not all prospects are rosy and that not
>    everyone will benefit equally, and they fear that they may be
>    among those left out.


Horse apples!  Anyone who can afford a coupla cartons of cigarettes per
month can afford an Internet account in most areas of the nation, with a
few rural exceptions that have similar problems with access to shopping
malls, FM radio, and toll-free telephones.


If they can't afford a $99 modem and a $200 used 286, more often than not,
they can go to the local library, community center or church basement and
use their Internet hook-ups.  (Like electric windows, PPCs, Pentiums and
web-access are nice, but not necessary for email, listservs and forums.)




> From this perspective, the Internet is
>    viewed as something alien and hostile, populated by an arrogant
>    elite claiming to be above social control and using the technology
>    to promote its own values and interests.
>
>    -- Fred W. Weingarten, IEEE Computer Magazine, February 1996


Elephant pies!  Exactly the same can be said of automobile owners, the
Masons, Kiawanis, NAACP, KKK, JDL, teachers' unions, parents, tenured
professors, Christian Coalition and any other group of which the paranoic
viewer is not a part.


There *are* three *major* access problems:


1.  Those who are nor online have to learn something they don't already
know, that's about 1/100th as difficult as learning to drive a car
including learning the traffic laws -- and many are unwilling to ask their
children to teach them.


2.  More often than not, the "problem" is not Information Have-Nots; it's
Information WANT-Nots, e.g., those who get their community and world news
from teevee soundbites, because it's too much of a hassle to read the
newspaper except for the comics and sports pages.


3.  But, by *far*, the biggest barrier to "equal" access is the [in]ability
to read and write -- though there is some evidence that online access is
*helping* folks, escpecially unchallenged kids, to learn how to read and
write ... simply because they finally see some use for it.


--politically-incorrect-jim
Jim Warren, GovAccess list-owner/editor (jwarren () well com)
Advocate & columnist, MicroTimes, Government Technology, BoardWatch, etc.


[puffery:  Dvorak Lifetime Achievement Award (1995); James Madison Freedom-
of-Information Award, Soc. of Professional Journalists - Nor.Cal. (1994);
Hugh Hefner First-Amendment Award, Playboy Foundation (1994);
Pioneer Award, Electronic Frontier Foundation (its first year, 1992);
founded the Computers, Freedom & Privacy confs, InfoWorld; blah blah blah :-).]