Date: Fri, Mar 12, 1993  (16:11)
From: Gail Williams <gail@well.sf.ca.us>
Subject: File 6--Computer Freedom and Privacy III Conf. (Report 6)

Barlow was a knockout yesterday.

Had people cheering, fuming, and roaring with laughter, and fuming.
(Ironically enough, I took pretty detailed notes on judic's
powerbook,
and left them at the hotel which is for the most part a splendid
place, but which charges a nightmarish pile of surcharges for phone
access).

He attributed the desire for privacy to the rise of the suburbs,
and
said small town and city people don't have any such privacy. A
transcript would be fun... I was struck by the choices he made in
the
way he used the word "we", and it was easy to tell some clearly
felt
he was not speaking for them.  He was doing Patriarch of the clan,
not
Seer, and 'Dad' got some folks pretty riled.

Judi's 'gender' panel this morning was a good surface-scratcher. 
One
of the panelists seemed to me to be under-informed, making some
general and sloppy statements inferring the need for censorship. (I
wish she'd really though it out, it would have been interesting to
hear a smart exploration of the 'hate language' model, but she
really
just wasn't far into exploring the concept of controls and norms
online.  The lines at the speaker's mic filled up with people who
wanted to speak out in favor of the alt.sex newsgroup.  Brenda
Laurel
and Mike Godwin were both quite articulate on this point.  The
speaker, and forgive me my literature is not by my side and I can't
remember her name, backed down, but everyone wanted to have at her.
My sense is that this kind of consciousness raising is exactly the
process we all need.  Librarians and artists are the ones who've
walked this path...   government subsidy of alt.sex.bondage and NEA
funding of Mapplethorpe and Serrano are very closely related types
of
issues, for example.  And several people made the obvious
metaphoric
point that a *place* where you go to talk about whatever can be
allowed to be offensive, the offended can go <elsewhere>, and ask
that
such speech not be accepted while in <elsewhere>.

Anyway, it's fun to hear various people talk it through, keeping
honing and allowing others to challenge their arguments!

Cliff Stoll was a bundle of energy at lunch today, bouncing all
around
the room, talking about the concept of being a 'public person'
online,
and all kinds of other good stuff he had written as notes in ink on
his hand, and borrowing somebody's camera to photograph him
mid-talk,
and playing at a fine frenzied pace through his lovely rant about
life
and learning and community.  His verbal and physical process while
giving a speech is like an anthem to creativity and eccentricity,
he
really makes me feel good about myself.

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