> >I hope you're kidding! Name ONE area that the guv got involved with
> >that continued to work (or, at minimum, didn't get worse!) This is just
> >another attempt to get their jack-boots in the door so they can "regulate"
> >the Internet - then it's down the tubes.
>
> Wait... this is a joke, right? One area? How about this little ole thing
> called the Internet? Created by the government, paid for by the government,
> and handed out for free for us to use. And believe me, sonny, it was a whole
> lot better back when the government ran it: no spam. No 500,000 porn sites.
> No AOL. Just Usenet, gopher, and email.
And the intelligence of the people on the net was MUCH higher too! I
remember the huge decline when AOL (or AwOL, as some called it,) started
dumping clueless folks onto the USENET news groups. But as bad as that
was, there were these two guys named Cantor and Segel, was it? Them two
bums who flooded the USENET newsgroups with messages about getting
permits to work in the USA. Once that cat was out of the bag, the whole
internet started a nose dive.
I strongly oppose the exploitation of women as per the porno sites.
They bother me, not so much that they are there, though that too; but that
they actively and indiscriminately recruit via bulk e-mail.
But... When the government held the reins, we didn't have much
civilian commerce, no home steading, no real webmastering, and a much
lower flow of information in general. Yes, the quality has fallen; but the
quantity has risen, and that includes the quantity of GOOD information as
well. And without civilian use, we would never be able to reduce the
need to spend huge amounts of energy moving large masses of people back
and forth to and from work and shopping.
In the long run, civilian use of the net promises energy savings that
are astounding! We may yet go back to the vast span of history where most
of the work we did was at or very near the home. We grew up with this
loss of parental guidance, so we don't realize that it was only the
industrial revolution that cause this wholesale loss of one or more of our
parents, and the huge loss of transfer of practical wisdom and character
that resulted. (I learned the art of analysis helping my father in his
workshop after he came home from his other job. No schooling could ever
teach me what I learned by his example of work at home. Though he was not
much at teaching theory in the abstract. Yet even in school, we derive
much of the theory ourselves by being asked the right questions. Without
the examples of our parents working, how many of us never got asked ANY
questions that might provoke practical thought?)
In addition, the volume of information and the connectivity the net
provides, provides a very large gain in the creativity index of this
nation.
The one area where America can, and has beat the rest of the world
hands down, is creativity. We have been at the forefront of human
freedoms and the technologies of personal power and entertainment. From
light bulbs, electric clothes irons, telegraphy, personal automobiles,
personal telephones, airplanes, movies, TV, home movies, business
computing, personal computing, and now the internet and web; we have been
out of the gate early (if not the first,) and lead the pack. Why? Because
we encourage free communication and free association. The internet IS
COMMUNICATION! And when people of like mind start communicating, new
things happen! True, not all are what we would call good... but on the
whole, I believe the balance is very much positive.
How different TV (and Newspapers) would be if they were only used for
government purposes!
We, the people of the USA, own a very large part of this internet,
and the legacy that this government created. Heck, contrary to what some
of our burro-c-rats would have us believe, we own this government! And we
must encourage our government to expand this territory, AND keep our
government from squashing this new arena of freedom.
The air transport industry was another arena the government helped
create. It did this with subsidies for air-mail. We should encourage it
to subsidize school and library access to the net, while discouraging it
from building actual "terminus" structures which would compete with ISP's,
or enable the government to easily monitor or enforce standards of
conduct. (Threats to access, such as bulk e-mail, excepted. And the
growth of bulk e-mail is THE GREATEST threat to access!)
One only has to look at what the FDA has attempted with respect to
information about vitamins and herbs, to see what the government is
capable of. They tried to prevent the publication of nutritional
information that they had not approved. This was resoundly struck down at
at the time her royal highness was trying to ram the equivalent of a
national HMO down our throats, with 15 year jail terms for ASKING for any
treatments not in a national codex of approved medical treatments. George
Will said the FDA's attempts at censorship generated more letters to
congress than any issue to date.
Subsidies to schools, not direct USPS or other involvement, would be
the most appropriate way of getting the government to help grow the net.
But by and large, the government is not that influential. The Cable TV
industry and the phone companies are more likely to make the difference,
particularly if the government encourages them through subsidized access
to schools.
I still remember the debate on whether those on welfare should be
allowed to have telephones. We ended up with a tax to provide some level
of near universal access. We fund our public libraries with local and
some federal funds. Since schools and libraries are the dominant
non-commercial information "structure" of our towns, they would be the
logical choice for internet subsidies.
One other Major Step, would be to mandate that all Federal courts
have and provide public access to the laws themselves, and all public
trial data, including transcripts. After that, all other federal
governmental agencies should be mandated to provide full internet access
to their policy papers, regulations, and ALL other public data. Most of
the states would probably take note and follow.
(I'd write more, or maybe more coherently; but I am asleep right
now...)
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