...is my aeroplane
Grab your caffeine, and focus. This week's WU is quite long (over 800
lines), yet only has 9 articles.
Why, you ask? Because I received alot of good prose this week from
the Jankowski brothers and kMc. AND I found two very long, but ex-
pertly written pieces about the "Communication Decency Act" {retch}
Everything is well worth your time (IMHO) or I wouldn't have sent it.
So, let's dive in before I get long-winded.
***********************************************************************toc
[ Table of Contents ]
8.1 Broken Arrow. -review- (ggibson@aztec.astate.edu)
8.2 Cool No Mo'. -prose- (cynsmith@utxvms.cc.utexas.edu)
8.3 Chinese events. -varied- (etrigan@eden.com)
8.4 Going Downhill. -prose- (billjank@mindport.net)
8.5 TB. -prose- (mjankows@beta.centenary.edu/kelly.mccollum@chronicle.com)
8.6 Old West. -joke- (kmembry@greenmtns.com)
8.7 EXTREME PAIN. -news- (kmembry@greenmtns.com)
8.8 Independence in Cyberspace. -news- (kelly.mccollum@chronicle.com)
8.1 ...and more. -news- (stavros@eden.com)
***********************************************************************8.1
[ "Gordo" sends us his review of the movie "Broken Arrow". ]
For those of you who made the claim that John Travolta was back when
he portrayed that cool-cat hit man in PF, you can now justify your
claims with evidence by seeing BROKEN ARROW. Travolta plays a hard
line fiery major in the Air Force named Deakins. He steals 2 nukes
from his b-3 bomber and holds them and the Southwest United States
for ransom. Christian Slater plays his ex-co-pilot and friend who
has to battle for the nukes back. Typical plot, but great action!
Within the film, there is one hell of a cool nuke explosion and some
great fight scenes that are rivaled only by Mortal Kombat! I would
also like to commend the CHICK (for lack of a name) for her portrayal
as a gritty park ranger who teams up to help Slater get those damn
nukes back from that mean Travolta guy. Damn this was good. Go see
it! "Ain't it cool!"
***********************************************************************8.2
[ "does this mean that i can't pierce anything?" was sent in ]
[ anonymously by a femal reader of the WU. ]
I have recently come to the unaviodable conclusion that i am no
longer cool. i know that this is supposed to happen some time when i am
about thirty and i complain that the music is too loud and i can't
understand what the guy is saying, but i have always been a little older
than my years, and at the age of nineteen, i now realize the truth - i am
a washed-up old geezer.
This has been approaching for quite a while. i now rely on the radio and
mtv as my source of new music, the first sign that i am not really hip.
my clothing choices have increasing approval from my mother, sign number
two. i even tried to fight this lack of hipness and got my ear pierced a
third time, but it got infected and i had to take it out - i am just
destined to live a life among the un-cool, i guess.
but my fate was sealed last weekend, as i was leaving a fraternity party.
(another sign - i had a good time at a greek function!!!!) my date and i
were dressed in formal attire, it was three in the morning and we were
walking back to the car. we passed a group of hip youngsters, probably
returning from a night of live music, dressed in decidedly _un_formal
attire - basically my friends and i in high school. after we crossed
paths, i heard one of the hipsters say, quite sarcastically, "gee, i wish
_i_ was cool enough to go to a formal, and wear a tux. how _cool_ "
it took me a couple of seconds to realize that HE HAD BEEN MAKING FUN OF
ME!!! i was completely mortified, and wanted to turn around and yell - "I
swear i'm not like this! i used to be cool! i listened to nine inch nails
when i was fifteen!!" i know that i probably said something exactly like that
to some sorority girls when i was in high school, and it is true what
they say about karma. i knew that it was no good, there was no use in trying
to convince them that i wasn't the type of person who would go to a frat
party. my fate had been sealed. i am now one of them.
***********************************************************************8.3
Chinese New Year, Dim Sum, and "Snake In the Eagle's Shadow"
Of the many things that went on this weekend (and it was a great week-
end) most of my weekend has had a Chinese Slant to it. I guess this
isn't a big surprise since today _is_ the beginning of the Chinese New
Year.
For lunch on Sunday, I attended my first official "Dim Sum" - the Chinese
traditional Sunday dinner. To my (and my roomie, Teo's) great joy, we
were treated to a Dragon Dance and several martial arts displays while
we were eating. If you missed it this year, mark Chinese New Year on
your calendar as a good day to eat Chinese food at a nice Chinese res-
taurant next year.
I also rented my first Jackie Chan video. (I've been blessed that the
UT theatres like to show jackie films.) "Snake In the Eagles Shadow"
(1978) is a pretty good film, but is surprising in that almost all the
people who are in "Drunken Master" (1979) are playing the same roles
in this movie. Overall, a good movie, but obviously one of Jackie's
early films. Tonight I'm watching "Armour of God"; the movie where
Jackie nearly killed himself and put a thimble sized hole in his skull.
Expect a review next week.
***********************************************************************8.4
[ Jank has favored us with another flourish of his pen (or keyboard, ]
[ as the case may be. This time Jank explains to us "Why The World ]
[ is Going Downhill". ]
Howdy, one and all.
I have here in my grubby little electronic paws, the final, in-
controvertable proof the the world is on a downward spiral, descending
further into a gaping maw of denial, unaccountability, and generally not
good things. Yes folks, the Jank is back at it again, dropping right
wing conservative bombs from the Voodoo Economics MotherShip. Although,
to tell you the truth, this isn't so much a conservative soap box that
I'm up on, as an out of touch, out of college working sap who is finally
realizing that it is me that is having to pay for the things that I want,
and that Uncle Sam has a fairly sizeable hand in my pocket. (For the mo-
ment, we'll ignore the fact that I'm a federal employee, although I would
have to consider the military the one of two branches of the government
that cannot withstand further cuts, and after seeing overseas deployment
commitments go up, and force size go down, would reccommend increasing our
budget. The other branch is the EPA. Good trout water is essential to
the wellbeing of the nation.)
So I'm crusing the web, starting out as many do on the Cool Site
of the Day (Sorry, no URL at this moment), and it connects me to the
Budget Simulation site out of Berkeley:
http://garnet.berkeley.edu:3333/budget/budget.html).
At first, I think, Berkeley, hmmmm, is my screen leaning to the left a
little bit? But then I read for a while, and it seems like a pretty bal-
anced thing, yeah, so there are a few stabs at Reganomics, but a few
stabs at tax 'n' spend as well, I think I'll play. So I do, trying my
best to balance the budget, raising military spending, cutting social
security, welfare, agriculture programs, raising environmental spending,
cutting the hell out of taxes, and have the computer run my numbers.
I was pretty pleased. I had eliminated the deficit, and paid off
$200,000,000,000 ($200 billion) of the $5,000,000,000,000 ($5 Trillion)
national debt. So I would have been hammered in the press for putting
homeless out on the streets, and making the near dead starve, but I felt
it was justified. I mean, how much of that social security check that
your grandmother is getting did she actually contribute? Not much, and
that that she did was spent years ago when the Congress decided to loan
itself the money in the Social Security "Trust Fund." And I'm sorry
folks, the Idea of owing $5,000,000,000,000 to the rest of the world
gives me the willies. What happens if they decide to call our debts?
Are you ready to learn Japanese? Didn't think so, kemosabe.
But does the simulation say "Hey, Good Job! You've eliminated
the deficit, balanced the budget, and generally accomplished what the
weenies in Congress and the waffle in the White House have not been able
to do since LBJ increased military spending in the late '60's and ran a
surplus." Did I get congratulated for looking out for future generations
of Americans? Was I merely patted on the back for balancing the national
checkbook like each and every one of us is required to do? Did I get
accolades for doing for THE MAN what I must do for my family lest THE
MAN come and take everything I own and throw me in jail? (Gee, sorry I
floated those checks, let me pay you the interest and we'll call it even.)
Not even close. The program, and I quote said: "OOPS! (emphasis
theirs) You've cut so much that the federal budget now contains a
substantial surplus. Many economists warn that this budget (I think that
they wanted to insert a may here) help induce a recession, and ordinary
citizens (may) demand a refund. You might want to cut taxes or raise
spending."
So I sat here aghast, and thought, "If this is what I get for
eliminating the deficit, what are they going to say if I increase the
deficit?" So I did. I went back, and raised spending, and cut taxes, and
ended up $200,000,000,000 ($200 billion) in the hole. And got no nasty
message. It was just business as usual
(Another aside: These millions, billions, and trillions sort of
all blend together and it's kind of abstract. Let's put this in real
terms. Say you're making $50grand [$50,000] each year, and you decide to
live off grubs on a tent, and make that contribution on your tax form to
reduce the national debt in the amount of your entire salary, it will take
you 4 MILLION YEARS to pay off just the deficit for one year. Principal
only, not any interest. At six percent interest, the interest on that
$200 billion is $12 billion. Translation: Your salary don't mean squat.
If we wanted to get everyone in the USA, all 250 Million of us to get to-
gether and pay off the 5 Trillion Dollar Debt, you would have to cut Uncle
Sam a check for $20,000 each. Personally, I'd rather buy a new car. IF
you're ever in NYC, walk down 42nd Street, and there on the corner of 42nd
and I think it's 6th Ave, is the National Debt billboard. It's kind of
scary.)
Now the thing that I don't understand is how the economists at
Berkeley can get a recession from eliminating the deficit. Especially if
we do it without a tax cut. Jack and Jill Sixpack is not going to notice
a difference in their taxes, and if we do have enough to give them a tax
cut or a refund, they're going to be in hog heaven. More money in the
consumer's pockets means more investment, more savings, more spending.
More money bypassing Uncle Sam's control and moving the economy. Besides,
it's their money to begin with. They deserve as much of it as they can
get. Uncle Sam shoud just be a detacthed Uncle, not a parent to us all.
Well, I'm glad to have that off my chest. The site severely
disturbed me. Kind of interesting though. Ya'll, this is something that
our generation is going to have to deal with directly. Our folks are
going to retire in a few years, and it's going to be up to us to support
them through social security. If the debt keeps growing, the interest
payment we need each year keeps growing, and that means that the amount
of money the government needs grows, and we will have to pay it. Or THE
MAN will come have a serious talk with us.
Love
Jank
***********************************************************************8.5
[ the good doctor sent out this plea for comfort early last week... ]
I have been thinking about things lately, mostly what is wrong with the
wolrd, as I'm sure many of you do. Most of my thought has been about Taco
Bell. Until about three years ago, and even before then, you could walk
into TB and get a full meal for just under 3 dollars. Now it takes more
like five or six. It is unbearable. Now the cost of products hasn't
risen that much in this short of time, so there is no reason for this in-
crease. The money is going to wacky things, not to the employee where it
should. In good old Bossier "Get Down" City, they have redone two TB so
that they have carpet and crazy painted wood cutouts. Granted this is a
nice addition, I have never gone to a TB for its art or decor. Why not
lower the prices and get rid of these frivilous additions.
Another facet of TB has me worried. Any of you who have been to The Bell
lately may have noticed what I did. Saturday before skating, The unwired
Trey La and myself visited one of the new carpeted TB's for lunch. While
enjoying a BLT soft taco (I won't even go into the thought of bacon on a
taco, basically because while I find it out of the ordinary, it tastes
pretty damn fine), I was reading the tray liner when to my astonishment
I saw that TB is condoning the use of LSD. They are doing so with, get
this, their new toys for the kid's meals. One of the figures has
stickers on his tongue, and the caption endorsing the figure said, "Check
out the wacky stickers on Bez's tongue." I'm glad my child isn't here
for this. I'm not saying that people who do these drugs are bad, I'm
just saying that there is no reason for a huge corporation to endorse
suck products.
Now don't get me wrong, keep going to TB, keep enjoying TB, but just
remember the good old days.
the doctor
[ ...to which the kmc responded with these witicisms. ]
It breaks my heart to see one of our strongest and finest taco eaters
so disillusioned with The Border.
In many ways, I agree with you, Doc. I doubt we'll ever again see a
39-cent taco sale. Why, you should make a run for the urban east
coast, where the value menu starts at 79 cents and you have to go to
a "Taco Bell Express." The Bell has changed in many ways, and not
only price-wise. I won't even go into the demises of the Bell Beefer
and the Enchirito (or the rise of Bacony Bacon).
But I think that before you go throwing out the flour tortilla with
the Taco Lite, you --WE-- should all stop to consider what Taco Bell
has done for us.
It wasn't that many years ago -- I'm remembering a time when Taco
Bells were made of real adobe and actually had bells on them, when
your burrito came wrapped in foil and the restaurant decor consisted
of patio furniture. There weren't even drive-throughs then. -- when
Taco Bell didn't have a value menu, and tacos (hard-shell only) cost
about a dollar each.
Then came a time of great change. Maybe it was the wise prodding of
father PepsiCo.(TM) that did it, but Taco Bell cleaned up its image,
cleaned up its restaurants, and introduced "The Value Menu" ("59, 79,
99" -sing along!). Before long, restaurant chains all over the world
were following suit. Heck, I was in a Long John Silver's the other
day, where you can now get one piece, one side and one order of fries
for $1.99.
What I'm saying is this: were it not for Taco Bell, you would not be
able to walk into McDonald's today and get a Double Big Mac, Super
Size Fries and Coke for under $5.00. That's like a dollar a pound, a
person could live for a month off that in Bangladesh!
So Doc, I know things may seem bad, but look back to the past and
realize that in your lifetime you have experienced an era of great
change, like the freedom protestors in Tiananmen Square, the tearers
down of the Berlin Wall, Forrest Gump.
Relish your next Light Double Decker Nacho Cheese Wild Sauce Bacon
Taco and free refill. They may never taste so sweet again.
***********************************************************************8.6
[ The squidman sent this joke called "Tales of the Old West". ]
A cowboy is riding across the plains of the old west, when he is
captured by Indians. The tribe puts him on trial for crimes against
the Indian Nation, and he is found guilty.
"You have been sentenced to death," said the Chief, "but, as is our
custom, you have three wishes to make as your last requests."
The cowboy thought for a minute and said, "Well, for my first wish,
I'll need my horse."
"Give him his horse," said the Chief.
The cowboy whispered something into the horses ear, and the horse
took off like a shot across the prairie. 20 Minutes later, the
horse returned with a beautiful blonde woman on it's back. The
cowboy looked at this, shrugged his shoulders, and helped the young
lady off the horse. He then took her into the woods and had his way
with her.
"Second wish," said the Chief.
"I'll need my horse again," said the cowboy.
"Give him his horse," said the Chief.
Once again, the cowboy whispered into the horse's ear, and once
again the horse rode off over the prairie. 30 Minutes later, the
horse returned with a beautiful redhead on it's back.
The cowboy looked up and shrugged, helped the young lady off the
horse, and went into the woods, same reason as before.
"This is your last wish," said the Chief," make it a good one."
"I'll need my horse again."
"Give him his horse," said the Chief.
The cowboy grabbed each side of the horse's head, and put his face
right up to the horse's.
"I SAID POSSE!!!!!!!"
***********************************************************************8.7
[ "YYEEEEOOOWWCCHHHH!!!!!!!" is what the squid-meister called this ]
[ article. After boring us last week, apparently he wants to get ]
[ his revenge by giving us a permanent wince. ]
Scrotum Self-Repair
One morning I was called to the emergency room by the head ER nurse. She
directed me to a patient who had refused to describe his problem other
than to say that he "needed a doctor who took care of men's troubles."
The patient, about 40, was pale. febrile, and obviously uncomfortable,
and had little to say as he gingerly opened his trousers to expose a bit
of angry red and black-and- blue scrotal skin.
After I asked the nurse to leave us, the patient permitted me to remove
his trousers, shorts, and two or three yards of foul-smelling stained
gauze wrapped around his scrotum, which was swollen to twice the size of
a grapefruit and extremely tender. A jagged zigzag laceration, oozing
pus and blood, extended down the left scrotum.
Amid the matted hair, oedematous skin, and various exudates, I saw some
half- buried dark linear objects and asked the patient what they were.
Several days earlier, he replied, he had injured himself in the machine
shop where he worked and had closed the laceration himself with a heavy-
duty stapling gun.
The dark objects were one inch staples of the type used in putting up
wallboard.
We x-rayed the patient's scrotum to locate the staples; admitted him to
the hospital; and gave him tetanus antitoxin, broad-spectrum antibacter-
ial therapy, and hexachlorophene sitz baths prior to surgery the next
morning. The procedure consisted of exploration and debridement of the
left side of the scrotal pouch.
Eight rusty staples were retrieved, and the skin edges were trimmed and
freshened. The left testis had been avulsed and was missing. The stump
of the spermatie cord was recovered at the inguinal canal, debrided,
and the vessels lifated properly, though not much of a hematoma was pre-
sent. Through-and-through Penrose drains were sutured loosely in site,
and the skin was loosely closed.
Convalescence was uneventful, and before his release from the hospital a
week later, the patient confided the rest of his story to me. An un-
married loner,he usually didn't leave the machine shop at lunch time
with his co-workers. Finding himself alone, he began the regular practice
of masturbating by holding his penis against the canvas drive-belt of a
large floor-based piece of running machinery. One day, as he approached
orgasm, he lost his concentration and leaned too close to the belt. When
his scrotum suddenly became caught between the pulley-wheel and the
drive-belt, he was thrown into the air and landed a few feet away.
Unaware that he had lost his left testis, and perhaps too stunned to
feel much pain, he stapled the wound close and resumed his work. I can
only assume he abandoned this method of self-gratification.
Please Remember - This is an ACTUAL case history.
***********************************************************************8.8
[ I started to include a piece that spike@io.com sent me. It was ]
[ called "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" and was ]
[ written by John Barlow, a man I hold great respect for. During ]
[ the first reading of JB's declaration I was adjulantly support- ]
[ ive, but after reading this week's MEME (sent to me by kMc), I'm ]
[ beginning to have second thoughts. Don't get me wrong, I think ]
[ the CDA is the worst bill to pass out the sewers of government ]
[ in decades, but Barlow needs to ground himself a bit. ]
[ If you want to read Barlow's declaration before you read this ]
[ (though it's not neccesary) you can find it at: ]
[ http://www.eff.org/homes/barlow.html. ]
[ Also, I've cut this piece down some. If you want the whole ]
[ thing: http://www.reach.com/matrix/. ]
MEME 2.03
If you're like me in just two ways -- you live in the United States and
subscribe to a lot of electronic discussion groups -- chances are your
email box is brimming with alerts, updates and invective about the "end of
the Internet."
The Internet -- or cyberspace -- reached one of those rare and crucial
junctures in its history this February. As you probably know, the Congress
of the United States passed a law called the Communications Decency Act
(CDA) making it a felony to transmit "indecent" or "patently offensive"
material on-line. This law, signed by President Clinton, is now in
quasi-limbo, awaiting a final verdict from US judiciary on its
constitutionality. I will not tire you with the logistical details of this
process, other than to invite you to visit Voters Telecommunications Watch
(http://www.vtw.org/) which contains plenty of information on the timetable
and the bill's history. You can also read my editorial opposing the bill,
printed in the New York Times last May
(http://www.reach.com/matrix/nyt-gettingcybersmart.html).
But why is this a critical juncture? No, it is not because the Internet
will be "shut down" as some argue. It is not because the CDA passed. This
is a critical juncture because the CDA is pushing avid users of the
Internet towards a self-defining decision, a decision with long-term
consequences. At the heart of this decision is a basic question: will we
deal with the real world or retreat into our own private delusion -- one
which places cyberspace above and beyond the realities of the physical
world?
The Myth of Digital Nirvana
Some people believe cyberspace is separate from the realities of the
physical world. They argue that cyberspace, because it is "not where
bodies live" is the inevitable catalyst which will usher in a new, better
world. The CDA is then just another example of foolish, ham-fisted
government. Government, according to these prophets, a vestige of
primitive society, will soon become obsolete, replaced by a society of
mind. So who cares what governments think? Why not just wait out these
times of troubles until the new world is unveiled? Don't roll your eyes
yet -- serious people, at least serious in the sense that they get media
attention and the public sees them as representatives of cyberspace, argue
that:
"This bill was enacted upon us by people who haven't the slightest idea
who we are or where our conversation is being conducted. It is, as my
good friend and Wired Editor Louis Rossetto put it, as though 'the
illiterate could tell you what to read.'
Well, fuck them.
Or, more to the point, let us now take our leave of them. They have
declared war on Cyberspace. Let us show them how cunning, baffling,
and powerful we can be in our own defense."
That quote comes from "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace," by
John Perry Barlow (http://www.eff.org/homes/barlow.html). Barlow, a
co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (www.eff.org), former
Grateful Dead tunemaster (an American rock and roll band) and cattle
rancher is perceived by the public and the media as a messenger
representing the views of a new wired culture. So, his opinions do matter.
This declaration of independence, written the week after the CDA became
law, is the best encapsulation to date of all that is wrong with seeing
cyberspace as separate from the rest of the world. (You can read a copy at
http://www.reach.com/matrix/barlow.html). It is wrong because it invites
people to ignore reality, and sit with their thumbs in their eyes while the
real world passes them by.
Reality Check
The Internet received direct US Federal funding until April of 1995,
through the National Science Foundation which managed the high-capacity
fiber backbone (in April, management was turned over to private industry).
Today the Internet receives indirect Federal funding through government
agencies which use the Internet to distribute information to the public and
from Federal research grants to universities conducting research that the
US government wants to promote. NASA is one such institution, MIT is
another. All the protocols governing the exchange of information through
the Internet -- things like FTP, TCP/IP, HTTP, SMTP -- were set by
standards bodies, a de facto kind of government.
The Internet is a wonderful product, the beneficiary of a rare kind of
international cooperation. In a world where the dynamics of the free
market are hailed as the best way to manage systems, the Internet is a
great, and fascinating, example of a successful collective. Too easily we
dismiss this phenomenon, but the development of the Internet is remarkable.
It flies in the face of those who argue government is inherently
inefficient and tyrannical -- a vestige of some primitive cycle in human
evolution. I cannot fathom how Internet users like Barlow can dismiss the
importance or role of government in shaping this medium, and that it can
have no positive influence from now on. Was the US government not a
primary influence behind the development of the Internet, from 1969 (the
year the Pentagon started funding research on packet networks) to 1995?
In the world of polemic, invective and hyperbole, history is nothing more
than fiction to be manipulated to suit the appropriate end. So when Barlow
trashes government by claiming:
"Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can
build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It
is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions."
I look back at the Pentagon, the Defense Department, the American
universities with Federal funds paying AT&T, Sun Microsystems, and others
to build a network of cables and computers and telephone lines and I think,
what is he talking about? Government built the heart of this thing with
real money -- the kind you get by collecting taxes. An "act of nature" is
a rain storm or the moon rising, it is not the spontaneous birthing of
packet network spanning the globe.
Anyway, having ditched history, Barlow presents a simple solution to
problems which might interest governments, like phone sex companies
advertising their services through web-pages featuring nude women and
orgasmic audio tracks (http://www.cyberslut.com/cyber.html):
"You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use
this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems
don't exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we
will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own
Social Contract."
I'm wondering what it means to form a social contract in cyberspace, one
with the kind of authenticity and authority of a constitution. Sounds
great in theory, but I don't actually "live" in cyberspace -- I live in New
York city, in the state of New York, in the United States of America. I
guess I'm taking things too literally. Apparently my "mind" lives in
cyberspace and that's what counts. It's my vestigial meat-package, also
known as my body, which lives in New York. Government, geography, my body
-- all are obsolete now thanks to "cyberspace that new home of mind,"
Barlow explains. That's why, speaking to government, Barlow argues:
"Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and
context do not apply to us. They are based on matter. There is no matter
here."
This philosophy is a Potemkin village, a sham of language, which serves to
create its own self-contained universe of logic where the real world is
always wrong and the cyber world is always right. It is not a universe I
want to live in.
This is the cyberspace I know -- and there are lots of them.
The essay you are now reading is being disseminated, initially, to the
readers of MEME -- a bi-weekly newsletter I author. At last check, MEME
had 2500 subscribers in 54 different nations. A sample: Iran, Pakistan,
Singapore, Turkey, Chile, India, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, Japan, England,
the United States, Ukraine. This is the world into which this essay goes.
What might I ask, are the binding values between the nations I mention
above -- Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Secular -- Democracy, Monarchy,
Theocracy? How do we "form our own Social Contract", as Barlow proposes?
Is it realistically possible? Each and every reader of MEME is
participating in the creation of Cyberspace. How, cutting through the
digital polemic, do we then, as supposed "cyber-citizens" or "netizens" act
in consort to form a community with the depth of complexity equivalent to a
geographic nation? The last time I checked, some of these countries on my
subscription list were in state of near war, yet we are all expected to
form some autonomous, self-governing community on-line, bypassing the very
real history of Homo Sapiens? Unless the last 30,000 years of recorded
human history are suddenly null and void, I think the odds of pulling that
off in the near future are pretty low.
So this ostensible solution of creating a parallel government in cyberspace
will not work anytime soon. Why is this then a center piece of debate over
establishing standards for cyberspace?
What will work?
Computer networks and the communications they carry are products of people,
and people live by geography, in physical space, under the rule of law.
Cyberspace then will be governed by people in the context of their culture.
The great challenge is to create a set of standards which somehow bridges
this incredible range of cultures, while allowing people the freedom to
communicate. Part of what makes this difficult to solve is the mystique
surrounding cyberspace, as if the whole thing were one monolithic
environment. It is not. Cyberspace is actually a set of different
communications tools, each of which should be treated differently. One end
can be marked "private" and the other end "public." The more "public" a
forum, the greater the rights of society; the more "private" the greater
the rights of the individual. In the real world, life is a constant
balancing act, a perpetual negotiation. Cyberspace is part of the real
world. By forcing this debate into a "winner takes all" do or die
struggle, we get to avoid the tedium of negotiating, arguing and trading to
reach a consensus. But that, in the end, is the tried and true way of
succeeding. So to start with, here are examples of what I mean by
different communications tools, ranging from the private to the public.
PRIVATE
Electronic Mail, one-to-one.
Internet Rely Chat (by invitation only.)
File Transfer Protocol (Password protected.)
CU-SeeMe Video conferencing (point-to-point, by invitation only.)
Internet Audio Telephone (point-to-point, by invitation only.)
World Wide Web (password protected sites.)
PUBLIC
Electronic Mail-based distribution lists (like MEME).
File Transfer Protocol (Anonymous, no password required.)
Usenet News.
Internet Relay Chat (Open, no invitation needed.)
World Wide Web (no password required.)
CU-SeeMe Video conferencing (open reflector site, no password required.)
There is a precedent for seeing media this way (in the United States). The
content of telephone conversations is seen as private, and moving through
the spectrum of media the other extreme is broadcast television. Broadcast
television is the ultimate public medium (and hence faces the most public
restrictions on content). In between the telephone and television you get
a series of media, moving from private to public, with print,
videocassettes and film falling in the middle. The tricky thing with
cyberspace is that it is all these mediums rolled into one. When Yahoo!, a
popular Web site, gets 14 million hits a day, that starts to look a lot
like television. This newsletter, sent to several thousand people who
subscribe, looks a lot like print -- bit more regulated than a phone call,
but a lot less regulated than a television show. Yet the technology behind
MEME and Yahoo! is the same.
I don't think a lot of lawmakers really understand this. That's one good
reason why we must work to demystify cyberspace. Prose that keeps this
medium mysterious only serves to increase confusion and does more harm than
good. Legislators, unfamiliar with this medium, look askance to rhetoric
which simply tells them they are dinosaurs trudging towards the dust bin of
history. Their response is to listen to the stimulus they do understand:
politics. What we can do, as people who cherish this medium, is work to
get it in the hands of those who set our laws. Unfamiliarity with the
medium is cyberspace's worst enemy.
Lost in the shuffle may be the important fact of why cyberspace is worth
nurturing: it is a medium, which for the first time in the history of the
world, gives one person the power to reach another person or a million
people equally easily. Never before has such power rested in hands of
non-elites, such as television companies and governments. Wider access to
power is the essence of what is great about the Internet, acting like
vaccine for a world where information is consolidating into the hands of a
few media-monoliths. But this power is also the source of the Internet's
own potential undoing. Greater power for each of us requires greater
responsibility. That's the flip side of the equation -- are we up to that
challenge?
I see this as the start of an essential and self-defining discussion. I am
extremely interested to hear from readers who do not live in the United
States, especially those living under laws separate from the traditions of
secular democracies. What is your impression of the limits of acceptable
behavior in cyberspace? Can we reach a consensus, as a global medium? Do
you feel the debate over free-speech in the United States is a universal
debate, which speaks to you? Do you think, as a group, Internet users can
form a community able to justly govern itself?
My intention is to gather these comments, and make them available to
everyone in a future issue of MEME. If you wish to keep your identity
confidential, I will do so. Your thoughts matter, because only through
dialogue can we reach consensus.
***********************************************************************8.9
[ stavros@eden.com sent in another piece concerning the CDA. The ]
[ CDA "would make"/"makes" the WU illegal, so I'm mighty concerned ]
[ about it. You should be, too. ]
[ excerpted from http://www.beach.net/challenge.html ]
The X-On Congress: Indecent Comment On An Indecent Topic
by Steve Russell
American Reporter Correspondent
San Antonio, Texas
2/8/96
censorship
free
THE X-ON CONGRESS: INDECENT COMMENT ON AN INDECENT SUBJECT
by Steve Russell
American Reporter Correspondent
SAN ANTONIO, Texas -- You motherfuckers in Congress have dropped
over the edge of the earth this time. I understand that very few of the
swarm of high dollar lobbyists around the Telecommunications Bill had any
interest in content regulation -- they were just trying to get their
clients an opportunity to dip their buckets in the money stream that
cyberspace may become -- but the public interest sometimes needs a little
attention. Keeping your eyes on what big money wants, you have sold out
the First Amendment.
First, some basics. If your children walked by a public park and
heard some angry sumbitches referring to Congress as "the sorriest bunch
of cocksuckers ever to sell out the First Amendment" or suggesting that
"the only reason to run for Congress these days is to suck the lobbyists'
dicks and fuck the people who sent you there," no law would be violated
(assuming no violation of noise ordinances or incitement to breach the
peace). If your children did not wish to hear that language, they could
only walk away. Thanks to your heads-up-your-ass dereliction of duty, if
they read the same words in cyberspace, they could call the FBI!
Cyberspace is the village green for the whole world. It is the
same as the village green our Founders knew as the place to rouse the
rabble who became Americans, but it is also different. Your blind
acceptance of the dubious -- make that dogass dumb -- idea that children
are harmed by hearing so-called dirty words has created some pretty stupid
regulations without shutting down public debate, but those stupid
regulations will not import to cyberspace without consequences that even
the public relations whores in Congress should find unacceptable.
In cyberspace, there is no time. A posted message stays posted
until it is wiped. Therefore, there is no way to indulge the fiction that
children do not stay up late or cannot program a VCR.
In cyberspace, there is no place. The "community standards" are
those of the whole world. An upload from Amsterdam can become a download
in Idaho. By trying to regulate obscenity and indecency on the Internet,
you have reduced the level of expression allowed consenting adults to that
of the most anal retentive blueballed fuckhead U.S. attorney in the
country. The Internet is everywhere you can plug in a modem. Call
Senator Exon an "ignorant motherfucker" in Lincoln, Nebraska and find
yourself prosecuted in Bibleburg, Mississippi.
In cyberspace, you cannot require the convenience store to sell
Hustler in a white sleeve. The functional equivalent is gatekeeper
software, to which no civil libertarian has voiced any objection.
Gatekeeper software cannot be made foolproof, but can you pandering
pissants not see that any kid smart enough to hack into a Website is also
smart enough to get his hands on a hard copy of Hustler if he really wants
one?
In cyberspace, there is the illusion of anonymity but no real
privacy. It is theoretically possible for any Internet server to seine
through all messages for key words (although it seems likely the resulting
slowdown would be noticeable). Perhaps some of you read about America On
Line's attempt to keep children from reading the word "breast?" An
apparently unforeseen consequence was the shutdown of a discussion group
of breast cancer survivors. Don't you think more kids are aware of "teat"
(pronounced "tit") than of "breast?" Can skirts on piano legs, er, limbs
be far behind?
But silly shit like this is just a pimple on the ass of the
long-term consequences for politics, art and education. You have passed a
law that will get less respect than the 55 m.p.h. speed limit dead bang in
the middle of the First Amendment. Indecency is nothing but a matter of
fashion; obscenity is the same but on a longer timeline. This generation
freely reads James Joyce and Henry Miller and the Republic still stands.
The home of the late alleged pornographer D. H. Lawrence is now a
beautiful writers' retreat in the mountains above Taos, managed by the
University of New Mexico.
Universities all have Internet servers, and every English
Department has at least one scholar who can read Chaucer's English -- but
not on the Internet anymore. Comparative literature classes might read
Boccaccio -- but not on the Internet anymore. What if some U. S. Attorney
hears about Othello and Desdemona "making the beast with two backs" -- is
interracial sex no longer indecent anywhere in the country, or is
Shakespeare off the Internet?
Did you know you can download video and sound from the Internet?
Yes, that means you can watch other people having sex if that is
interesting to you, live or on tape. Technology can make such things hard
to retrieve, but probably not impossible. And since you have swept right
past obscenity and into indecency, the baby boomers had better keep their
old rock 'n roll tapes off the Internet.
When the Jefferson Airplane sang "her heels rise for me," they
were not referring to a dance step. And if some Brit explains the line
about "finger pie" in Penny Lane, the Beatles will be gone. All of those
school boards that used to ban "The Catcher in the Rye" over cussing and
spreading the foul lie that kids masturbate can now go to federal court
and get that nasty book kept out of cyberspace.
But enough about the past. What about rap music? No, I do not
care much for it either -- any more than I care for the language you
shitheads have forced me to use in this essay -- but can you not see the
immediate differential impact of this law by class and race? What is your
defense -- that there are no African-Americans on the Internet, since they
are too busy pimping and dealing crack? If our educational establishment
has any sense at all, they will be trying to see more teens of all colors
on the Internet, because there is a lot to be learned in cyberspace that
has nothing to do with sex.
There are plenty of young people in this country who have
legitimate political complaints. When you dickheads get done with Social
Security, they will be lucky if the retirement age is still in double
digits. But thanks to the wonderful job the public schools have done
keeping sex and violence out, we have a lot of intelligent kids who cannot
express themselves without indecent language. I have watched lawyers in
open court digging their young clients in the ribs every time the word
"fuck" slipped out.
Let's talk about this fucking indecent language bullshit. Joe
Shea, my editor, does not want it in his newspaper, and I respect that
position. He might even be almost as upset about publishing this as I a
about writing it. I do use salty language in my writing, but sparingly,
only as a big hammer. Use the fucking shit too fucking much and it loses
its fucking impact -- see what I mean? Fiction follows different rules,
and if you confine your fiction writing to how the swell people want to
see themselves using language, you not only preclude literary depiction of
most people but you are probably false to the people you purport to
depict.
Do you remember how real language used by real people got on the
air and in the newspapers? Richard Nixon, while he was president,
speaking in the White House about official matters. A law professor and a
nominee for Supreme Court Justice arguing about pubic hairs and porno
movies during Senate hearings. Are these matters now too indecent for the
Internet? How much cleansing will be required of the online news
services? Answer: Enough cleansing to meet the standard of what is
appropriate for a child in the most restrictive federal judicial district.
This is bullshit -- unconstitutional bullshit and also bad policy
bullshit. To violate your ban on indecency, I have been forced to use
and overuse so-called indecent language. But if I called you a bunch of
goddam motherfucking cocksucking cunt-eating blue-balled bastards with the
morals of muggers and the intelligence of pond scum, that would be
nothing compared to this indictment, to wit: you have sold the First
Amendment, your birthright and that of your children. The Founders turn
in their graves. You have spit on the grave of every warrior who fought
under the Stars and Stripes.
And what mess of pottage have you acquired in exchange for the
rights of a free people? Have you cleansed the Internet of even the
rawest pornography? No, because it is a worldwide system. You have,
however, handed the government a powerful new tool to harass its
critics: a prosecution for indecent commentary in any district in the
country.
Have you protected one child from reading dirty words? Probably
not, if you understand what the economists call "substitution" -- but you
have leveled the standards of political debate to a point where a history
buff would not dare to upload some of the Federalist v. Anti-Federalist
election rhetoric to a Website.
Since the lobby reporting requirements were not law when the
censorship discussion was happening, I hope you got some substantial
reward for what you gave up. Thirty pieces of silver doesn't go far
these days.
(Steve Russell, retired after 16 years as a trial judge in Texas,
is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of
Texas at San Antonio.)
This article may be reproduced free forever.