------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Jan 1994 10:34:38 CST From: Vigdor Schreibman - FINS Subject: File 8--Closing the "Values-gap": Learning from the Titanic READ THIS ISSUE OF FINS TO CONSIDER: * Lessons of the sinking of the Titanic * Improving the giving/getting compact in our lives ================================================================ FINS: Communicating the Emerging Philosophy of The Information Age FEDERAL INFORMATION NEWS SYNDICATE VOL II, ISSUE NO. 1 (111 lines) EMBARGOED UNTIL JANUARY 3, 1994 CLOSING THE "VALUES-GAP": New Beginnings: Learning from the Titanic By Vigdor Schreibman This is a hopeful time of year. Vice President Al Gore gave a speech just before the new year telling us that as we explore the challenges of the information age "we shouldn't hesitate to chart a new course" to avoid the dangers of narrow thinking. He invoked another of his wondrous metaphors, the tragedy of the sinking of the Titanic 91 years ago, to illustrate the kind of problems that occur when people are narrowly focused on profitable business interests and feel no obligation to respond to larger public needs. Gore observed that "The Titanic wound up two miles under the surface of the North Atlantic in part because people hadn't realized that radio was not just a curiosity but a way to save lives." Moreover, he explained, government has an obligation to get involved in such matters, because there are certain public needs that outweigh private interests. Today, as divers explore the hulk of the Titanic, we face a similar problem. A new world awaits us. It is one that can not only save lives but utterly change and enrich them. And we need to rethink the role of government once more. What Gore was suggesting was the need to rethink the interest of the communications industry to be free of business regulation and the public need "to avoid creating a society of information "haves" and "have nots." He observed that the Government "cannot relax restrictions from legislation and judicial decisions without strong commitments and safeguards that there will be a 'public right of way' on the information highway." Gore also asserted that "We must protect the interests of the public sector. That's essential in building the information highway. That's essential in providing affordable services for public education, public health and government." In short, a deal is being proposed: prudent deregulation of private industry in return for a public right of way on the information highway to serve paramount public needs so that everyone will benefit. It has been more than a decade since Daniel Yankelovich described the cultural revolution that is sweeping the United States, "rewriting the giving/getting compact." That revolution revolves around the struggle to lesson the influence of instrumental forces in our lives and to heighten the sacred/expressive elements. In "New Rules," Yankelovich described how "simultaneously tens of millions of Americans have concluded that the old giving/getting compact that served our society so well for so long must now be revised because it fails to accommodate the sacred/expressive yearnings that lie at the heart of people's experiments in self-fulfillment." [Yankelovich, 1981: ch. 22]. Al Gore has invoked the tragedy of the Titanic to underscore the seriousness of that cultural and political yearning in the context of proposed legislation for development of his "information superhighways." On January 11, in Los Angeles, he will outline in more detail the main components of the legislative package the Clinton administration will present to Congress. Congress has already provided for a strikingly successful operational test bed of what is required; namely, the National Research and Education Network (NREN) program connecting schools, libraries, and local governments to each other and to the Internet. An institutionalized NREN model can serve the paramount human, social, and ecological priorities of the global people. The design of a telecommunications infrastructure architecture that can serve the public goods expected from the NREN program--that private industry has no real interest in serving--is a precondition to the viability of any public policy in this domain. Such an infrastructure must preclude opportunistic industry controls governed by materialism and profit maximization to the detriment of principled "third sector" purposes. Moreover, the need for an appropriate infrastructure must not be confused with operational functions of the infrastructure (e.g., universal access, privacy, etc.) that are distinct from and dependent upon the infrastructure. What the "third sector" must have to realize these paramount purposes of society, as recognized by enlightened academic and real-world experience [e.g., McGarty, 1992], is total control over its own necessary backbone network services, and mid-level networks. This can be publicly supported by direct instrumental subsidy and by a grant of financial interest in commercial network services that have been made possible through billions of dollars in Federal subsidies to industry. Congress can franchise a National Public Network Corporation to competently manage and coordinate those independent "third sector" network services. Private enterprise in the information revolution should then be free to pursue the gold mines of the 21st Century to their hearts content. The deplorable "technological imperative" that has heretofore guided the allocation of tens of billions of dollars annually for public information technology, was recognized to be without public vision in testimony before Congress Dec 2, 1993, by Sally Katzen, Administrator of the OMB Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The Titanic dangers that are inherent to the information age, requiring instrumental support for public goods, is now openly advocated by the Vice President. Sobering experience has taught us to expect little from such declarations to ameliorate the rigged and lopsided giving/getting compact in our lives, but the tide may be turning. With a little luck and collective perseverance in pursuing our purpose, something good could come of all this talk about information superhighways. =============== Federal Information News Syndicate, Vigdor Schreibman, Editor & Publisher, 18 - 9th Street NE #206, Washington, DC 20002-6042. Copyright 1994 FINS. 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