>On Mon, 28 Jun 1999 21:39:04 -0700, "Cthulhu's Little Helper"
> Mark C. Langston <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 29 June 1999, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (William X. Walsh) wrote:
>>Those decisions are what make you a part of the market.
>Perhaps, William, perhaps. However, *I* will *choose* to be a market.
(...)
>I am not a passive consumer. Nor is the rest of the net, though you
>may wish it so. We do not grant you license to turn the net into the
>next TV wasteland.
>(and when I say "we", I refer to myself, and any other disenfranchised
>person who chooses to agree with me. Unlike many on the other side of
>the fence, I don't dare assume I'm speaking for 200 million people.)
For the "marketeers" there are no citizens and no netizens, only
gullible victims to be preyed on.
But there are citizens and netizens. People are something more
than what the advertising world wishes to cast them as.
However, this disease is now being inflicted on the Internet wholesale
via government support and initiation, and with ICANN as the spearhead.
The Internet was created under protection from government against
the marketeers and the hype of "free marketeering"
and for now at least in the U.S. government has given the
ok to spread the hype as far and as wide as possible.
But the Internet is the product of science, not of "hype".
Interesting. The Internet puts changes on the order of the day
in terms of new forms of participatory activity by the citizen
and netizen. And the science needs that participation as well.
Those who care about the Internet recognize that there is a need
to utilize this participatory quality to figure out how to
deal with the attack on the Internet from those who see
the communication it makes possible among people as a danger.
But the scientific world needs the communication as well.
So only if the U.S. government wants to be setting the world back
into the dark ages they will keep up with this thoughtless
process of trying to convert what is a scientific and communications
medium into an arena for skullduggery. There will be a cost if
they continue on the path, and it has seemed that there are
folks in the U.S. government who recognize that this is not
the best path forward.
That the Internet as a communications medium needs protection
and that its integrity is important.
Ronda
