GETTING WIRED:
The Engineers of The Information Superhighway
August 5, 1994
Dorothy S. Zinberg
London Times Higher Education Supplement
A youthful American president and his technically-savvy vice president are closer to the
information technology revolution than were their predecessors. The young and the
middle-age gurus of cyberspace, many of them survivors of the 1960s cultural revolution
of the 1960s, and now endowed with Midas-size fortunes, have moved on to influence the
telecommunications policies being proposed by the federal government. Outspoken in
their conviction of what principles should guide the new age of information, they have
become both advocates and critics.
And the White House is listening to them. Complaining about the White House as "a
yesterday place" that had to be made into a "tomorrow place," President Clinton promptly
installed email which is rumored to be swamped already. More recently the Vice
President delivered his first major address on the construction of the U.S. National
Information Infrastructure (NII), more familiarly called the Information Superhighway -a route as familiar to those long-associated with the facts and fantasies of cyberspace and
Internet as it is bewildering to those who believed that conquering the word processor had
brought them to the front ranks of techno-wizardry.
Even a technologically-sophisticated politician -- Gore is a respected authority on
biotechnology and nuclear weapons systems, as well as a best-selling author on
environmental policy -- needs help with jargon like byte-bonding; ohnosecond; and
extropy. More importantly, he needs as tutors individuals or organizations that have
devoted themselves full-time to the recognition of the major issues that are hurtling down
the infobahn as each advance in technology unleashes often unanticipated ethical, legal,
and institutional dilemmas making existing mores and practices obsolete.
Who are the electronic experts who have helped shape the vice-president's thinking on
these increasingly complex subjects, and what are the issues that have sent them
scurrying to Washington and to marathon-length "conversations," debates, and strategyplanning sessions on Internet? According to Wired, the hot magazine for cyberspace
aficionados, the keystone for the Vice President's speech was provided by Mitch Kapor,
the president, founder and a substantial financial backer of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, a four-year old, non-profit organization based in Washington, DC.
Kapor, whose development of Lotus 1-2-3 is generally credited with spurring the largescale adoption of desk-top computers, and his board have turned their formidable
intellects, energies and capital -- almost all the board members are multimillionaires -toward the creation of an organization that they intend to be the political force of
cyberspace.
A zealous idealist, Kapor has credited some of his achievements to an excellent computer
course in his public high school "which had never gotten anyone into Harvard," and
Columbia University's special mathematics classes for gifted high scool students. The
seeds were planted, although four years at Yale during the height of student unrest,
derailed most linear thinking. Lotus 1-2-3 (and a continuing outpouring of software
designs) came after a long detour into the search for the inner self and the awareness that
his guru and LSD were not going to provide the answers.
In conversation Kapor was modest in describing his part in the growth of the foundation
as well as in the history of the field. Most of the great father figures of cyberspace (there
is only one woman on the board) are very much alive and several serve on the
Foundation's board of directors.
Among those whom Kapor credits with pioneering the seminal ideas in the field and now
taking the lead in pursuing the ethical and political repercussions of the information era
are Kevin Kelly, most recently the author of Out of Control: The Rise of The NeoBiological Civilization. The title conveys the gnawing doubt that perhaps cyberspace
might turn out to be Pandora's Box. Another guru, Stewart Brand, is a Stanford
University -educated biologist and author of The Whole Earth Catalogue and The
CoEvolution Quarterly, and also known as the father of the X generation. He aspires to
nothing less according to Kapor, than "killing off Newton and Descartes," and replacing
their theories with those that are derived from evolutionary biology. Kapor also included
John Perry Barlow, 'who has the soul of a poet, is epigrammatic and speaks in
metaphors.'
Evangelical in their quest to use the new networks to improve the human condition, to
represent the public interest, and to extend civil liberties into cyberspace, the Electronic
Frontier Foundation is the 1990s embodiment of the 1960s mantra--turn on, tune in, drop
out. Only they have turned on and tuned in to the policy issues brought about by their
own inventions at the frontiers of cyberspace. And thanks to the fortunes they have
amassed, they can afford to 'drop out' of mundane concerns.
In the 1960s transformative experiences for many of today's guardians of the public's
rights were more likely to have been hallucinogenically inspired. LSD and mescaline
intensified the spaced-out psyches that were looking inward to find their true selves. Now
for these senior citizens of space, transformative alludes not to the individual psyche but
to society as a whole.
Kapor might have provided the underpinnings for Gore's information policy, and Barlow
might even have flown with him on Air Force II, but they have also taken aim at the
administration's policy on a technology, the Clipper chip, which would allow the
government to pry into conversations and transactions along the Internet. Along with
another group, the Cypherpunks, dedicated to demolishing the potential for a "cyberspace
police state," they have temporarily derailed the government's efforts to gain access to
privately held information on the Internet.
The new means of communication in cyberspace have led to conflicts between privacy
and national security as well as between intellectual property rights and the public's right
to know and many other first and fourth amendment rights.
The social challenges arising from the new technologies are staggering. New laws have to
be promulgated as do new ethics. Kapor believes that the problems surfacing on the
Internet are only the tip of the iceberg; that communications between the law and
technology are inadequate leaving the public's right to privacy and intellectual property
unprotected. Barlow avers that nothing less than total restructuring will suffice.
Already more than 26 million people are on the new highway and some six million are
linked into commercial networks; the numbers are expected to double with the next five
years. But for those who cannot get onto the highway in the decade ahead the signs are
ominous. The specter of an increasingly rigidified two-class society based on the
information-haves and have nots of technical know how dampens the enthusiasm of even
the most committed of the technobelievers. Those who are not cruising the superhighway,
are likely to be consigned to Max Weber's dustbin of society, the 'lumpen proletariat,' in
effect, unable to speak the language or navigate what will become habitual to the technohaves. The consequences could be as potentially destabilizing as any revolution.
Kapor and his colleagues are constructively obsessed with the potential for social
disruption, and worry about the threats to democracy. They are attempting to turn into
legislation the very ideals that impelled a generation to stand against the dominant culture
of their era, particularly the Vietnam war. Fortunately, Vice President Gore's interest has
helped to personalize the contact between insiders and outsiders and lessen the chances of
all-out war. But each side will be increasingly faced with dilemmas -- the government
does have to provide security for national defense. thereby creating the likelihood of Big
Brother lurking on the highway --anathema to cyberenthusiasts and architects.
Kapor wants the future of Internet which began as a research base to be explored. "Now
it's self-sustaining thanks to the NSF and others. This vast network is not centrally
controlled and has enormous implications for society--it is decentralized, no one owns it.
There are threats. It can be taken over, balkanized, collapse under its own weight and
come under increasing commercialization. How should it be preserved? No one is doing
this."
But the road is strewn with potholes. Critics of the Foundation claim they have already
sold out to commercial interests. And the government support which made so much of
the Internet possible will shrink drastically if the new budget for the defense department
which threatens to undermine research universities is passed. The Electronic Foundation,
the Cypherpunks, and other similar groups who are the 'defenders of the public interest in
cyberspace' will have to balance their commitment to total freedom to the entitlements for
intellectual property rights and even more difficult, the knowledge that it was the
government that supported the research that made cyberspace possible.
Technology-induced change is inevitable. Mutual interaction between government
officials and cyberspaceniks is not. The Vice President, Mitch Kapor, and the other
pioneers who are transforming reality to virtual reality and back should be
enthusiastically supported in their efforts to protect the first and fourth amendments for
everyone. And educators should be searching for clues to creativity in the life histories of
these 'Merry Pranksters.'