>From Penn commencement address by Dr. Eric Schmidt, chairman of the Board,
>CEO, Google Inc. Monday, may 18, 2009
“…Why is ubiquitous information so profound? It’s a tremendous equalizer.
Information is power, people have fought over it, people care a lot about it,
it serves as a check and balance on politicians. If you were a dictator, which
of course you’re not going to be, because you’re a fine graduate from Penn,
first thing you would do is shut off all the communication so that people
couldn’t actually talk each other and figure out how to make the world a better
place.
Information is very, very important. And in fact the way you should
invade these oppressive regimes is through information. Then the citizens will
take that information and turn their societies into better societies…”
Penn Almanac, May 26, 2009, Volume 55, Number 34, pg. IV
Mr. VanHelder and list,
I completely agree with Dr Schmidt. In our micro-society, University City, it
is our community newspaper and the public listservs which stand out as the
precious assets to continue open information exchange and journalism. Compare
and contrast these assets to the goal of The Quest and the censored Penn list,
UCNeighbors. Think of our isolation from each other and our ignorance of
important issues in our community, if the goals of information control on the
censored listserv had been realized!
Neighbors will remember that the original stated goal of the censored list was
to replace this “unmoderated list” in the neighborhood with a forum completely
under the controlling eye of one moderator with a personal agenda. Using
intimidation, by not defining the standards which would get someone banned, or
what topics would be censored; the early days of the censored list showed the
chilling effect on the subscribers under the general threat of censorship. Many
neighbors first noticed that UCNeighbors was tremendously "boring" only
consisting of "good neighbor" posts.
As the power of being linked to the enormous Penn computer network seemed to
empower the censors to maximize control and secrecy over censored neighborhood
communication, the UCNeighbors list closed its archives to the public despite
the general claims of the university that university discussion lists are in
the public domain. Of course, the university failed to place a disclaimer on
the opening page to inform potential subscribers and new residents that the
UCNeighbors list is not open to all the area neighbors in the geographical
boundary the list purports to serve, and the list archives are not publicly
accessible. Viewers do not have proper notice that the list is a private
secretive club despite the appearance of being an open community discussion
group. Hosted by the university further confuses the appearance of the club,
the type of which should be hosted by a private company without the university
guidelines for use of electronic resources.
Isn’t it ironic that Dr Schmidt correctly noted, at Penn’s graduation, that
demanding control over, and shutting off information, is the FIRST action on
the road to dictatorship; of a nation or a corporate gentrifying micro-society
within it?
I celebrate our local community information assets, and I applaud our local
citizens for “staying tuned” to the public forums and rejecting the first step
on the road to dictatorship!
Sincerely,
Glenn
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