💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › jon-bekken-the-information-railroad.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 11:06:08. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: The Information Railroad Author: Jon Bekken Date: 1994 Language: en Topics: information, Libertarian Labor Review, technology, internet Source: Retrieved on 27th January 2021 from https://syndicalist.us/2017/07/29/the-information-railroad/ Notes: From Libertarian Labor Review #17, Summer 1994.
Everywhere you turn, nowadays, you bump into the information
“revolution.” Politicians prattle about information “super-highways,”
national competitiveness and better jobs. Transnational corporations
shift data-entry and computer programming work to Barbados and Ireland,
using computers, fiber-optic lines and satellites to move data back and
forth. Cable companies promise 150, 300, 500 cable channels – and have
scores of Home Shopping Network imitators in development. Computer
workstations automatically monitor the number of key strokes per minute
in many workplaces, and report that information to the boss. Computer
networks make it possible for labor activists and others to keep in
almost-instantaneous contact with each other, to coordinate
international campaigns and to access a wealth of information.
Vice President Albert Gore speaks of “a planetary information network
that transmits messages and images with the speed of light from the
largest city to the smallest village on every continent.” This, Gore
promises, will lead to
robust and sustainable economic progress, strong democracies, better
solution to global and local environmental challenges, improved health
care…. help educate our children… It will be a means by which families
and friends will transcend the barriers of time and distance. It will
make possible a global information marketplace…
Gore advocated five principles upon which “information highways” should
be based: private ownership, competition, minimal regulation, open
access and universal service. The U.S. effort would “be built and
maintained by the private sector,” Gore said, and he encouraged other
countries to do the same. Gore concluded by exulting that
telecommunications links “strengthen the bonds of liberty and democracy
around the world. By opening markets to stimulate the development of the
global information infrastructure, we open lines of communication…”[1]
Similarly, Commerce Secretary Ronald Brown issued a report, “Putting the
Information Infrastructure to Work,” which promises “a fundamental
change in the way we work, the way we learn, the way we communicate.”
Brown looks to information technology to enhance U.S. competitiveness,
speed electronic commerce, improve health care, improve the environment,
sustain libraries “as agents of democratic and equal access to
information,” and provide government services faster and more
efficiently.[2] President Clinton’s science advisor agrees: “Information
highways will revolutionize the way we work, learn, shop and live.”[3]
And Gore promised Communications Workers of America members 500,000 new
information jobs in the next 18 months.[4]
Computer, cable television and telephone services are. converging –
today it is technically possible to deliver similar services over each
of these networks, at much higher volumes than was possible just a
decade ago. Hype about the “information superhighway” is nearly
inescapable. Whether we like it or not – and we are told that we will
like it –corporations are wiring the land, developing a host of new
information and video “services,” and deploying information technologies
in our workplaces. Indeed, they began deploying earlier versions of
these technologies more than ten years ago. But these systems have not
been developed with our needs in mind, and to the extent that workers
have been consulted at all it has been only as potential consumers. Now
the government is trying to speed the course of these developments in
ways that would strengthen the corporate stranglehold on what could be
an invaluable community resource.
A great deal of energy has been expended debating the most appropriate
metaphor for discussing the evolving system, which the Clinton
administration originally described as a National Information
Infrastructure. This never caught on, whether because it’s an awkward
phrase or because people couldn’t figure out just what was being
proposed (after all, infrastructure includes everything from schools to
sewers). Instead, politicians, corporate officials and journalists began
speaking of an “Information Highway” (which quickly metamorphosed into a
superhighway), a much more concrete metaphor, and one that quickly
spawned a host of associated metaphors (Highway Robbers, Potholes, Road
Kill, Toll Booths, On Ramps, etc.)
At a recent labor conference many people challenged the “superhighway”
metaphor, arguing that highways are lifeless, ugly, unfriendly places
(they preferred to think of the emerging information systems as a web –
a living, interdependent organism). Others favor “superhighway”
precisely because the emerging system looks to be lifeless, a
fiber-optic scar across the land. Others thought the emerging systems
looked more like a Shopping Mall where everything is for sale and people
and ideas are tolerated only if there is money to be made off of them.
This debate over metaphors is an argument over how we should think about
the emerging system – its possibilities and dangers, its structure, how
it is controlled. To see it as a Shopping Mall is to position it as an
abomination; a Web is a much friendlier concept (and one that proponents
hope would shape policies in a more congenial direction). Each of these
visions is technologically possible, but none really captures the
essence of what is presently being built. Thus we are offering our own
metaphor, the Railroad.
While railroads and highways both get people and goods from place to
place, there are important differences. Ugly as they may be, highways
are accessible to any automobile or truck (most exclude bicycles and
motor scooters) on equal terms. You might be required to pay a toll
(particularly out east), but you go where you want, carry what you will,
and move at your own rate of speed (subject, of course, to speeding laws
and the highway patrol – restrictions which have led some to favor
lnfobahn as a metaphor, after the German autobahns which are reputedly
free of such annoyances). Highways are owned by the public.
Railroads, on the other hand, are privately owned. (Passenger service is
provided by a government-owned company, Amtrak, but it leases access to
rail lines.) The companies which operate them generally have a monopoly
over their particular routes, and they can set rates and policies
subject only to the constraints of the capitalist marketplace. The
owners determine the routes, which towns will be served and which (the
vast majority) will not. They decide which services they will make
available. You don’t drive on a railroad, you are cargo – just like the
coal and other goods being hauled from place to place.
The railroads have organized their business in such a way as to make it
practically inaccessible for the majority of the population (the
railroads don’t handle small freight, many communities lack train
service, passenger trains run so infrequently, and so poorly, that they
are impractical for most people). The service the railroads provide the
general public is impoverished and centralized, but this way of running
railroads has proven highly profitable to those in charge.
The railroads are like the emerging information system in another
important way – they were built on the wholesale theft of valuable
public resources. Railroads received massive land grants from the
government in exchange for building railroads. By right the railroads
ought to belong to us, the entire population, since they were built on
our land (often land still held by native Americans) by ill-paid workers
with money largely raised from the sale of more of our land. Similarly,
the Information Railroad is being built on the back of a publicly owned
network of computer networks, the Internet (so called because it is less
a physical network than a system for coordinating the informational
resources of hundreds of computer systems across the country and the
world). Much of the financing for building the system is coming,
directly or indirectly, from our taxes, and much of the information
being bought and sold is ours as well.
As communication scholar Herbert Schiller notes, the Clinton plan is “a
blueprint for corporate domination” sold through the same empty promises
that were earlier used to sell radio, television and cable:
The nation’s information/media/culture sector is currently the site of
sweeping transformations… Stunning corporate mergers and acquisitions
among telephone, computer, cable and entertainment companies, each of
them already dominant in their field, are preparing the way for … an
unprecedented corporate enclosure of national social and cultural
space.[5]
It seems clear that many people will be kept off the Information
Railroad routes. A growing number of people – about 7 percent – do not
even have basic telephone service, let alone the computers, modems and
high-quality lines needed to hook into computer networks. Far fewer
people are hooked up to cable television – the other distribution
system. Industry is urging the government to abandon even the pretense
of universal access for new communication services. Although Vice
President Gore suggested that connections to libraries and public
schools should be subsidized in the name of universal access (though
this would at best set up a distinctly second-class access system for
the poor, particularly in an era where both are being starved of the
resources to provide even their present functions), a former Federal
Communications Commission research director argues that universal
service policies would discourage investment (indeed he advocates
letting rates for local phone service rise to market levels).[6] Plans
filed by four telephone companies with the Federal Communications
Commission for “video dial-tone” networks (which would upgrade telephone
networks to also deliver movies, television and information services)
illustrate why telecommunications companies want to dump universal
access requirements. Pacific Bell, Ameritech, Bell Atlantic and U.S.
West propose to build their networks almost entirely in wealthy areas.
Similarly, when Nynex decided to test the market for interactive
services it chose three luxury apartment buildings in wealthy Manhattan
neighborhoods.[7] The reason is very simple, that’s where the money is.
Information has traditionally been available to the general public
through a relatively democratic institution, the public library. Those
with money could get information more conveniently (and sometimes more
quickly) by buying their own copies of books, magazines and specialized
publications, but vast amounts of information were made available
through libraries free of cost to anybody able to read it. The Internet
is organized on the same principle, but with the difference that anyone
can make information available. Increasingly information is being
withdrawn from this free public sector and being transformed into a good
for sale. Private information vendors have made more information
available, but at a price that puts it out of reach of all but the
wealthiest. Much of their products are simply electronic compilations of
government information that was once available free of charge through
government documents libraries; the government is eliminating many of
its publications and much of this information, gathered with our tax
dollars, is now available only to those who can buy it.[8]
These technologies could easily be used to create a truly public
information system, with terminals available to all at public locations
(libraries, post offices, stores, schools, workplaces, and union halls)
containing a wealth of information (about employers, social services,
local events, political concerns, etc.) that people could use to help
them in their daily lives. Such a system could provide useful
information and, more importantly, it could provide an opportunity for
people to communicate with each other – to distribute alternative
information, to air their views, to make contact with like-minded
people. A truly democratic communication system is technically quite
feasible.
But that is not what the corporations have in mind. They see the
Information Railroad as a means to deliver products and advertisements
to a passive consuming (and paying) audience.
On this point the cable operators, phone companies, computer makers and
broadcasters are all agreed. Although they are battling to achieve their
cut of the traffic on the highway, they are unanimous in seeking to
exclude the public’s participation and interest….
In the long run … hardware sales will be dwarfed by the golden flows
that will be extracted from the viewing public for the shows, games,
films and specialized data that will be transmitted. Private ownership
of the electronic highway confers the right to determine who and what
will be given access…
While the electronics and cable companies… claim, for example, that
interactive TV heralds the arrival of viewer participation and autonomy
already announced plans for the new services belie this promise. Most of
the interactivity, in a corporateowned and sponsor-supported system,
will inevitably be directed to the future invasion of the home with
marketing messages …
In addition to the established home shopping networks, cable programmers
are waiting in the wings with channels devoted to advertisements, game
shows, food and the Macy’s catalogue.[9]
A trade magazine recently listed scores of new cable channels – among
them TACH: The Auto Channel, Television Shopping Mall, Lincoln Mint
Network (an interactive shopping “service” complete with
coupon-dispensing device in your home), Catalog 1 (a Time Warner-Spiegel
joint venture featuring 16 upscale catalogs), and a host of music,
movie, talk and sports channels.[10] Cable companies talk of 500-channel
systems, but most of these channels would be devoted to advertising, to
home shopping (even though industry surveys show that 71% of cable
subscribers reject such “services”),[11] and to pay-per-view services.
There is no money to be made by developing systems – labor channels,
public access, dossiers on major corporations with information on their
labor and environmental policies (as distinct from information on
credit-worthiness and stock prices, which find a ready market), etc. –
in which people can talk to each other about our common problems, and
therefore they will be put on line only if we buy the bandwidth
(inevitably the corporations will be able to outbid us) or we force the
owners to open up spaces for the public.
The Information Railroad is not being built by public interest groups,
it is being developed by the giant corporations that already provide
telephone and cable television. A $26 billion merger between the Bell
Atlantic telephone company and cable giant Tele-Communications Inc. that
would have given the merged firm control over phone or cable lines going
into more than 40 percent of American homes (and a good deal of the
programming carried over those lines) has fallen through. But plenty of
other corporations are lining up at the trough looking for a piece of
the action.[12] The recent Viacom/Paramount merger, for example, brings
together a distributor (Viacom is one of the largest cable operators in
the country) and a content provider (Paramount makes films, publishes
books and owns sports teams), positioning them to own and control both
what we receive and the channels we get it over.[13]
Companies already make about $12 billion a year, primarily by selling
information on a pay-per-use basis to computer users (lawyers, stock and
currency brokers and similarly well-heeled interests are the primary
customers, and most of the commercial services now available are
targeted to their needs – thus there are two competing services
providing the full text of all U.S. court decisions and other
information for lawyers, but none targeting the more numerous homeless
population). They hope to expand in part by broadening the range of
information made available and marketing it to new audiences, but also
by getting us to pay for information which is presently available for
little or no cost.
Much of the money driving the Information Railroad isn’t seeking to
communicate with the general public, however. Rather, corporations and
other institutions have been investing heavily in telecommunications for
several years in order to develop and control global business operations
and increase the flow of profits by moving work, goods and money around
the world almost instantaneously.[14] A recent AFL-CIO Executive
Committee statement on Telecommunications Policy embraced Clinton’s
national information infra-structure proposal, but urged “policies to
encourage a unionized, high-skill, high-wage workforce … [and] to
promote a positive trade balance…”[15] This is precisely what Clinton
and the corporations do not have in mind.
While corporations have good reason to believe that these technologies
will help improve profitability, there is no reason to believe the claim
that high tech jobs will restore American “competitiveness” or create
secure, well-paid jobs. Although a handful of high-tech workers
(engineers, computer programmers, etc.) are well paid, most workers in
computer and other high-tech firms earn miserable wages working in
unsafe conditions for subcontractors driven by ruthless competition.
Thousands of workers in California’s Silicon Valley, for example, work
with toxic chemicals for about $6 an hour (no benefits). If they object
or try to unionize their plants are closed and the work transferred to a
new sweatshop, whether in the U.S. or any other country where cheap
workers can be found. Sometimes these electronic sweatshops go bankrupt
owing thousands of dollars in back wages to workers. These workers are
prisoners of the “virtual corporation,” where manufacturers such as IBM,
Digital Microwave and other industry giants contract out their
manufacturing operations to fly-by-night contractors; the resulting
corporate “flexibility” is highly profitable to the bosses, and helps
keep U.S. workers “competitive” with our fellow workers around the
globe.[16]
Nor are engineers and programmers immune from “competitiveness.”
Telecommunications, computer and other information industry firms are
laying off hundreds of thousands of workers around the world as they
turn their technology to the task of eliminating high-paid workers. And
much of the surviving work is being transferred to countries like India
and Ireland where skilled workers can be hired much more cheaply than in
the U.S.[17]
Universities and schools are also succumbing to the lure of high tech
exploitation. The State University of New York, for example, is trying
to increase faculty “productivity” by offering courses and even entire
academic programs via the information railroad. Lectures can be carried
by video or as computer files, class discussions and papers by email,
and students’ progress monitored by computer. One lecture can be shown
to thousands of students around the world, exams can be graded
automatically, classrooms and libraries can be phased out, and faculty
can be laid off as students are increasingly “taught” by cheap,
automated systems.[18]
The Internet is essentially a cooperative. Although it was started with
Defense Department funds to link researchers around the country, the
Internet now links over 1.5 million computers in 50 countries. Users can
scan libraries for obscure books or locate a unionist in another country
who shares an interest in a particular corporation’s plans. “The
Internet’s structure encourages participation and involvement. User
contributions have sustained resources like bulletin boards and
archives, which offer others easy access to information… And it is run
democratically, with users on diverse sites participating in network
administration and maintenance.”[19]
The Internet also suffers from shortcomings. Aside from the handful of
cities with established “FreeNets” (local access centers allowing people
to hook into the internet by phone), users must pay hourly access
charges unless they are affiliated with a University or other
institution connected to the Internet. As a result, most Internet users
are affiliated (as students, workers, etc.) to universities or other
government agencies, hundreds of thousands of other users are on
commercial networks (CompuServe [owned by H&R Block], America OnLine,
Prodigy, etc.) that already charge for information on a pay-per basis
and reserve the right to control the types of information they
distribute. In addition to charging users, Prodigy (owned by IBM and
Sears Roebuck) sells advertising on the bottom of each screen. People on
these corporate networks pay more than do Internet users, but while they
don’t always have access to the full range of Internet materials they
can access a variety of for-profit databases not available over the
Internet including the full text of many newspapers,[20] latest stock
prices, weather and travel info, and specialinterest discussion groups
similar to, but not interconnected with, those on the Internet.
In any event, federal funding of the Internet ($12 million) is scheduled
to end next year, as the feds award new contracts for information
networks to private vendors. The Internet will continue for several
years even if it is displaced as the primary system, but as more and
more people sign on and the funds for maintaining and expanding the
system dry up it will increasingly become unreliable. And, of course,
much of the information currently available over the Internet is likely
to be shifted to the for-profit systems, where providers can charge for
access. Indeed, the National Science Foundation recently announced that
it is awarding five key contracts to telephone companies (Pacific Bell,
Ameritech, Sprint, MFS and MCI) to operate Internet Network Access
Points and the new Internet highspeed backbone. Many users fear the
telephone companies will seek permission to price service by usage
(presently Internet-connected institutions pay a flat fee for
connection) and are lobbying against metered pricing in order to
preserve the free flow of information through the Internet.
If current developments continue, the Information Railroad will develop
much as radio, television and cable before it – as a system for selling
goods and deadening minds with an endless stream of corporate-produced
programming. The economic benefits will largely be limited to the
handful of giant corporations that provide the programming and own the
railroad lines that deliver the endless stream of advertisements and
pay-per-view offering to our homes. And the alternative communication
systems that have been developing on the Internet and on similar
nonprofit networks will be forced to the margins.
But there are other possibilities. Many labor and other social movement
activists are using computer networks to coordinate their efforts
nationally and internationally, to mobilize international solidarity, to
share information. When the Chinese government massacred its citizens
near Tianamen Square, dissidents transmitted detailed, vivid reports
instantly by fax, telephone and computer networks to activists
throughout the world. During Yeltsin’s recent coup, activists countered
the official lies with first-hand reports which were distributed over
networks affiliated to the Association for Progressive Communications
(in Canada the WEB, in the U.S. LaborNet and PeaceNet). Rank-and-file
workers in the auto, airline and trucking industries share information
and ideas over LaborNet computer conferences. Workers in Mexico,
Indonesia, Russia and other countries post news of their struggles, ask
for (and distribute) information about transnational corporations
operating in their area, share information about toxic chemicals and
other hazards. The IWW’s Industrial Worker is produced by groups
scattered across the U.S. and Canada, using electronic mail to find
information, edit and discuss articles, and transmit the final articles
to Chicago for printing.
In the 1980s, Spanish dockworkers in the Coordinadora union proposed
developing a computer network that would link all the European ports
(and would be accessible not only to union officials but to any
dockworker), and which would make available information on all the major
shipping companies, on working conditions, and on labor disputes
(thereby preventing shippers from moving from port to port to unload
scab goods or to play workers off against each other). That proposal was
never implemented, but as computer networks become more widespread it is
quite feasible to link workers in every plant companies operate around
the world. Such networks could help rank-and-file workers to counter the
bosses’ international strategies with their own and to mobilize nearly
instantaneous international campaigns.
Several years ago, Sam Dolgoff pointed to the decentralizing and
democratic possibilities opened up by the “cybernetic revolution.”
Computers and modern telecommunications networks make decentralized,
non-hierarchical decision-making more feasible, and indeed more
efficient than centralization and bureaucracy. Dolgoff noted the vast
amount of information even then being distributed over the Internet by
scientists, educators and others “who are now already self-organized
into local, regional, national and international federations [which]
freely circulate information…”
The unfoldment of the new society will depend greatly upon the extent to
which its self-governing units will be able to speed up communications;
to understand each others’ problems, and thus better coordinate their
activities…. The new technological revolution could expedite the
disappearance of the parasitic institutions of the state and
representative government. …
The organization of the new society will not, as in the state or other
authoritarian associations, emanate from “the bottom up” or from “the
top down” for the simple reason that there will be no top and there will
be no bottom. In this free, flexible organization power will naturally
flow, like the circulation of the blood, throughout the social body,
constantly renewing and revitalizing its cells.[21]
Dolgoff noted that the very same technologies which could open new roads
to freedom could be used (and were being used) for very different ends –
to regiment individuals and obliterate human values. The new society is
not technologically determined, rather we must develop and fight for our
own vision of the future.
The following excerpt from a proposal by the Spanish Coordinadora
dockworkers union, “Information and the Construction of Socialism,”
presented at a conference of alternative dock workers unions in Hamburg,
Germany in 1985, was translated by Carlos Betancourt and Peter Waterman.
He who has information has power. The collection and use of data and
information about objects, persons, groups or peoples one wishes to
dominate or exploit – this is the secret of the accumulation of power,
the manipulation of persons, groups and peoples, the exploitation of
natural resources, of natural and human behaviours at the end of the
20^(th) century….
The alternative to the monopolistic accumulation of information is the
socialization of information: access to data centres by those persons,
groups or peoples about whom information is accumulated in such data
banks. Against monopoly, diffusion….
The existence of secret data banks is not only dangerous for the
‘informatised’ (not the same as the ‘informed’) but is as – or more –
dangerous than the existence of arsenals of weapons …
In so far as wages and conditions demands are concerned, we need, in the
first place, to emphasise the necessity for access to information. In
the same way as there exist health and safety committees, there is an
undeniable necessity for information-access committees….
In relation to the ports movement
The transport of commodities is the point in the chain of control least
dominated by the capitalist structure. Production is strictly controlled
by the rigid structure of the enterprise. Consumption is fully dominated
by the extreme vulnerability of the isolated individual. Spatial
mobility in the transportation of commodities implies a certain distance
from immediate control by the instruments of the enterprise structure.
And it is here where world capitalism is currently fighting its
fundamental battle. And, within transportation, it is precisely in the
movement of commodities within ports that there continues a possibility
for exercising some kind of counterpower with a certain degree of
autonomy and strength…. ·
[The alternative port workers movement should] create information
centres which can be used by the base at different points: ports,
autonomous trade union organisations, national and international
coordination. Such information centres, characterized by their openness,
accessibility, participation, and by their ascending, descending and
horizontal diffusion, should be administered by representatives of the
base, or those serving them, and supplied with the necessary material
equipment (computer information bulletins, magazines, data centres,
etc.).
We would also suggest that the contents – the data to be worked upon,
stored, systematised, analysed, distributed – should be the following:
Working conditions, skills, wages, collective agreements, standards,
laws and working rules, etc.; Trade union experiences, organization,
strategies, campaigns – especially solidarity campaigns –coordination,
etc.; …. Documentary archives, magazines, articles, documents relative
to matters of interest….
(This section is largely obsolete, based upon a network of list-serves
and bulletin boards long since superseded by more powerful technologies
also more susceptible to corporate control.)
LaborNet – Particularly strong on international labor news from Russia
and Asia, this rank-and-file net also offers industry and union specific
conferences in airlines, auto, graduate employees, IWW, National Writers
Union, teaching, Teamsters, etc. Inter-connected to the Internet, shares
conferences with EcoNet and PeaceNet (and with APC systems around the
world), $3 to $10 per hour on line. In Canada many of these same
services are available on the WEB. email: labornet-info@igc.apc.org; in
Canada, support@web.apc.org
AFL-CIO Labor Net – Several AFL-CIO unions operate conferences on
CompuServe, a commercial information vender owned by H&R Block.
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility – among other projects,
they publish a useful free electronic newsletter: CPU: Working in the
Computer Industry email: cpsr@cpsr.org
RSI Network – A major industrial hazard of the Information Railroad is
repetitive stress injury for keyboard workers. This bimonthly electronic
newsletter discusses treatment, workstation design, case studies, etc.
Email: majordomo@world.std.com. The message should read: Subscribe RSI
Economic Democracy Info Net – EDIN maintains a Labor Issues section
containing government documents, labor law, and files on U.S. and
international labor issues. It is accessed via gopher. Type gopher
garnet.berkeley.edu 1250
Spunk Press maintains an anarchist/alternative (rather broadly defined)
electronic contact list which includes newsgroups, archives, electronic
newsletters, mailing lists and email addresses for publications.
Requests to: ian@spider.co.uk
1-Union – a syndicalist list (loosely speaking), where IWWs, DeLeonists,
anarcho-syndicalists and assorted Marxists discuss a range of issues and
share information on current labor struggles. Like most electronic
discussion lists, this is unmoderated, which means that the quality of
the debate is uneven and some participants are hostile to the list’s
stated goals. But the discussion is more productive (and more civilized)
than that found on lists such as the Anarchy list. email:
1-union-request@lever.com
The Amateur Computerist – a quarterly newsletter of historical and
theoretical arguments on computing and its utility to workers. For
electronic subscriptions: au329@cleveland.freenet.edu For the printed
edition send $5 (1 year) to R. Hauben, PO Box 4344, Dearborn MI 48126.
[1] Albert Gore, Remarks prepared for delivery to International
Telecommunications Union, March 21, 1994, emphasis added. (Distributed
electronically over IAMCRNet, International Association for Mass
Communications Research)
[2] “Brown Releases Report Highlighting Benefits, Barriers of National
Information Highway,” News Release, Department of Commerce, distributed
electronically. The full report (which I have not read – there is no
mention of barriers in the news release) is available for a charge from
the National Technical Information Service or electronically under the
documents/papers subcategory of the speeches/testimony/ documents
category on the iitf.doc.gov gopher.
[3] John Gibbons, quoted in John Burgess, “Can U.S. ride to prosperity
on ‘information highway?”‘ Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 10, 1993, lOD.
[4] Harry Jessell, “Gore stumps for superhighway bill,” Broadcasting &
Cable, June 20 1994, p. 36.
[5] Herbert Schiller, “Highway Robbers,” The Nation, Dec. 20 1993, p.
753.
[6] Peter Pitsch, “Disconnect the Universal Subsidy,” Wall Street
Journal , April 4 1994, p. Al2. This position is shared by many in the
industry, but is by no means uncontroversial. The head of QVC, a
home-shopping company that operates two cable channels and recently
tried to buy Paramount, calls for building two competitive information
highways. “If you have one wire, then you better have it be a common
carrier [like the telephone] and regulated within a true inch of its
life.” He seemed quite shocked when his interviewer argued for a single,
unregulated wire. Don West and Mark Berniker, “Barry Diller: TV’s Smart
Agent,” Broadcasting & Cable, May 231994, pp.19–30, esp. 26–28.
[7] Mary Lu Carnevale, “Coalition Charges Four Phone Firms With
‘Redlining’ in Adding Networks,” Wall Street Journal, May 24 1994, p.
B7; Leslie Cauley, “Interactive Trials Are Trials Indeed-Tough to Start
and Tough to Judge,” Wall Street Journal, May 18 1994, p. Bl.
[8] This discussion borrows heavily from an interview with Herbert
Schiller, “The Information Superhighway: Paving Over the Public,”
published in Z Magazine, March 1994, 46–50. ·
[9] Herbert Schiller, “Public Way or Private Road?” The Nation, July 12
1993, 65. Similar prospects await computer users, from the
advertisements built into the Prodigy system to the “Internet Ad
Emporium” promised in a recent press release from Multimedia Ink Designs
of Poway, California.
[10] Broadcasting & Cable, May 23 1994, special section “NCTA ’94.”
[11] Harry Jessell, “Cable ready: The high appeal of interactive
services,” Broadcasting & Cable, May 23 1994, p. 75. The article reports
that cable subscribers are willing to pay a few dollars more a month for
interactive services such as video on demand or information services.
The text claims there is widespread interest in interactive TV shopping
as well, but 71.1% said no when asked “Would you be willing to shop from
your home using interactive TV?” This even though other questions held
out the possibility of lower prices.
[12] Though there is a lot of hype too – the Yankee Group found that
would-be builders of the information highway aren’t spending nearly as
much money as they claim on interactive media. Pacific Telesis, for
example, claims to be spending $16 billion over seven years, all but two
billion of that was already slated for routine maintenance and upgrading
of its facilities. Ameritech claims to be spending $33 billion, Yankee
says it’s closer to $4.5 billion. John Keller, “They’ll Spend Lots But
Lots Less Than They Say,” Wall Street Journal, May 18 1994, pp. Bl, B3.
[13] Erika Wudtke, “Who’s watching the wires?” MediaFile, April/May
1994, 10.
[14] These issues were explored in several books by communication
scholars (long before information became a subject for politicians’
speeches) including Herbert Schiller’s Who Knows: Information in the Age
of the Fortune 500 (Ablex 1981) and Vincent Mosco’s Pushbutton Fantasies
(Ablex 1982). For a discussion of the impact of computerization on jobs
see Harley Shaiken’s Work Transformed: Automation and Labor in the
Computer Age (Lexington Books, 1986).
[15] Statements Adopted by the AFL-CIO Executive Council, Bal Harbour,
Florida, February 15–18, 16. Elizabeth Kadetsky, “High-Tech’s Dirty
Little Secret,” The Nation, April 19 1993, pp. 517–20. These issues are
also addressed in Glenna Colclough and Charles Tolbert’s Work in the
Fast Lane (State University of New York Press, 1992).
[16] For a running list of these layoffs and detailed discussions of
working conditions in the industry see CPU: Working in the Computer
Industry.
[17] For a generally optimistic assessment of these developments see
“Potholes along the information highway,” The Voice (United University
Professions, AFT), April 1994, 8–9, 15.
[18] Betsy Reed, “The Wealth of Information,” Dollars and Sense,
March/April 1994, 9.
[19] The National Writers Union has filed suit over this, noting that
newspapers and magazines are not paying the freelance and syndicated
writers who provide the bulk of their copy for the right to republish
their work in electronic form.
[20] Sam Dolgoff, The Relevance of Anarchism to Modern Society, Third
Edition, Charles H. Kerr, 1989, 30–31.