On 29 Nov 96 Rol Fessenden <76234.3636@CompuServe.COM> wrote:
> .... I am not particularly comfortable with business driving
> Internet development, but I am less comfortable with the notion that
> someone actually thinks they know and can implement what this thing
> ought to look like for the good of all of us. Too paternalistic, too
> controlling, and too unlikely to be true -- at least for me.
Let's see, dear colleague, what is most suitable. In this great nation
under our Constitutional presumptions, "all power is derived from the
people," so how do we engage the people as master of their own fate? We
are both "not particularly comfortable" by decisions of the marketplace,
for a look around tells us that another "wasteland" we surely do not need.
Now we both also feel no comfort from looking for that uniquely gifted
"someone [who] actually thinks they know and can implement what this thing
ought to look like," because we capitalists and the socialists and
communists, as well, have been down that road also, and that is really the
pits. So what shall we do, during the fundamental transformation of our
civilization, which is now under way, just throw our hands up in the air,
allow some sort of irrational technological imperative to wag our
collective tails, or take command of our destiny in the way we know works
the very best?
We are planners and builders, are we not? The very best!
Altogether we could build one utterly magnificent, democratic Global
Information Infrastructure (dGII), directed by shared values. With the
genius of John Warfield, Chris Argyris, and Peter Senge, and the
meaningful participation of tens of thousands of others, perhaps millions,
who are at our very finger tips, across the Planet Earth, we can have it
all!
Why, we throw away more money every year on information technology than
it would take to get us there. Would it really hurt to do this work, the
building of an infrastructure for a new civilization, right?
But I here you say, dear colleague that you are content to let things go
straight to hell in a hand basket by following the wisdom of a deaf, dumb,
and blind man, ignorant of history, bereft of wise concern for the future
let machines and the irrational, power dominated market take us willy
nilly where they will. Is this really the future that American business
men, and women, creative genius of the history of mankind, want for their
children and their families and their country, and mine?
Your friend, in the spirit of learning.
Vigdor Schreibman - FINS <fins@access.digex.net>
[Browse Fins Information Age Library at the inforM system
of the University of Maryland: HTTP://www.inform.umd.edu:
8080/EdRes/Topic/CompResource/CompSoc/FINS/]
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dGII Now! democratic Global Information Infrastructure
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--Vigdor Schreibman - FINS <fins@access.digex.net>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>