Just having completed the registration of some Internet domains -- via payments to a US American outfit called "Network Solutions Inc", which now is owned by another US American outfit called "Verisign Inc", NasdaqNM ticker VRSN... -- and just having read yet another story about the machinations of ICANN, in its continual efforts to "scale up" to international realities, I have been wondering how the US American domination of the Internet has been playing overseas, recently...
So what follows here is a recent essay -- by Hervé Le Crosnier, the very able and much - experienced editor of the librarians' econference in France, Biblio-fr -- presenting his views of the structure and role of the Internet, going forward.
The view from France, in other words -- a very different one from the usual presented by the US press, but very representative... Some of what Le Crosnier observes, here, will sound very unfamiliar to US Americans, but not so to perhaps most others...
I had the chance to first use the Internet in 1992, and immediately I felt a great breath of fresh air, from the very first day when I succeeded in obtaining messages from a "listserv", apparently in the US. It was 5pm, and the computer -- the terminal, actually... you remember, those good old terminals with orange letters on their black backgrounds -- was lit up on my desk, and I was working in the catalog of my library. And then suddenly an avalanche of messages was arriving, from the other end of the world...
These were professional notices, but also a guy -- I still remember -- who was telling me live (I only understood afterward that this was a different mode, although I sensed right away the immediacy of the communication) about a speech by Al Gore during a meeting on the Internet being held somewhere in the West of the US.
What? Me, in my city in the provinces -- in Caen, in Normandie -- I was at the "center of the world"! At my own desk, as anywhere else in fact, I might receive, directly, observations by people like me on things which they themselves were seeing.
I believe that this "miracle" is renewed, repeatedly, for all of us who now use the Internet. I remember that ad from a few years ago, for an Internet access service: "How long has it been since you've had an intelligent conversation?"... If you are the only one in your village to cherish a particular passion, there nevertheless may be hundreds like you around the world. And the Internet makes contact with them possible -- from here, locally, and for the people who are here and who are local.
A short time later, urged on by Michel Melot, who at the time presided over the Conseil Supe'rieur des Bibliothe`ques, I discovered that I myself could become a "broadcaster", from my own little "center of the world", in my city in the provinces -- via a network of people who would engage in a long conversation, enabling both professional communications but also the general outlook on the world provided by such a medium. And so began an impassioned discussion, which now has continued for nine years, and which has permitted the weaving of a web of over 9,000 French - speaking librarians.
I found that from that terminal of 25 lines filled with 80 little orange characters, I could receive and send -- I could participate in already - existing and immense social networks -- and I could build a new network, constructing the social capital so necessary to personal life and to democratic interaction.
This was before the reign of "ecommerce", but it was -- it still is -- in the midst of a new wave of global resistance to the nefarious effects of recent dizzying increases in inequality...
It is the Internet: a new tool for social control, but also a new tool for democracy -- a new network of power, but also a new place for the emergence of the counter - cultures which critique and resist that power.
For the social nature of the Internet is as path - breaking as is the technique which supports it. The Internet is a "network of networks", one which provides a large margin of autonomy to its periphery -- there is no center, to the Internet. On the other hand the Internet is the heart itself of the interconnectivity of each of the computers which uses it -- by virtue of the interconnectivity and communications norms which define it, the "IP protocol".
At the level of social uses as well, the Internet displays these same sorts of contradictions:
Such facets of the Internet apparently are those which will occupy us over the two days of this colloquium. We must beware of reducing the Internet to a definition which will be too rigid for taking into account the diversity of its uses, of the dangers which some of them involve, and also of the possibilities which can emerge from the practices of interconnectivity.
We are told that we are developing into a "service economy". On the Internet, the term "service" has begun to take on a very particular sense, one which has become a "thing" in all the senses of that term.
A program offered as a "service" no longer is installed on the terminal of its user. It is rented, at the moment of its usage, as a function of that usage. You no longer have word - processing, you rent it. And when you rent it, you are not billed for the bit of emailing which does not "serve" you, but there are other means for making you pay, constantly, for your rental...
For example:
For the goal of "service", apparently, is to force you to pay -- each time, for each usage. It is, principally, a control of your social practices so as better to sell you new services, through the techniques of "one - to - one marketing".
The Internet exhibits such new practices of the "monopolies of convergence" -- one speaks of convergence when all media use the same network, digitized from end to end. No longer a matter of controlling prices, as in the time of the cartels, now the goal is "lifetime value" -- of a person -- to sell to him, for the duration of his life, all of the services which he ever will need. And so much the better if one knows the state of his bank account -- inasmuch as the banker is in on the deal, as well, also providing his particular "service", through his own banker's "portal".
Have a look, in this regard, at the unified "free" portal for members offered this Fall by the Crédit Agricole, TF1, and a telecommunications company whose name we shall not mention... Consider the slithering progress of Microsoft, from having been a software firm to becoming now a multiservice bureau on the networks. Consider finally the financial crisis in the values of the "New Economy": the banks now have "laissez faire", and the telephone companies have bought them up, to launch gigantic "Commercial Service Centers".
Happily, the future is not yet written. The simple act of denouncing a trend, of revealing it, can aid greatly in counteracting it. For this tendancy towards pay - as - you - go monopoly is beginning to come up against another use of the Internet network: its bursting - of - boundaries, its peer - to - peer communications, its swarming civil society.
Everyone knows of the role played by the Internet in the mobilization at Seattle, which succeeded in blocking the pheonomenon of neo - Liberal economic globalization by creating a globalization of human networks. This phenomenon is being studied by the braintrust of the US Army which is the Rand Corporation.
Under the title "Social Netwar", Rand describes the new capacity of the networks to focus and coordinate common action: everyone comes to such an effort with his own particular objectives -- even physically, considering the differences among "affinity groups" -- and it is the convergence of all of this which assures success. So this finishes the dichotomies and oppositions of the times of the Cold War -- no one is forced to "choose sides", now, in taking advantage of strengths of numbers and of diversity.
In addition, the Developing Nations -- and notably the networks of militants in "The South" who now are the most active -- can participate openly, as much by their presence as by their capacity to project their themes, their needs, and their proposals onto the global agenda. These are networks such as "Focus on the Global South" of Walden Bello, or "Third World Network" of Martin Khor. It is evidently the "Porto Alegre Experience" which is being inscribed upon our daily lives, in our reflections and exchanges with each other, because no controlled media can obstruct this diffusion of information. The networks go around such roadblocks.
The information will reach, directly, any who can understand it, and help them to develop their own proposals -- to reach those who know how to send it further, via "forwarding" to their own networks. Working with interconnectivities instead of hierarchies: we are moving toward a new global movement of the non - aligned -- the non - aligned from everywhere, among all populations -- in which the Internet will play a fundamental role.
And this political and social opposition at the global scale is only one example of this swarming of peoples associated with the Internet. One also finds other trends, in other social practices:
Science, though, is funded "at the source"... with the Internet, it can be the same for scientific publication, the articles issued by the public financing of research. The Budapest Initiative, which was made public on February 14, 2002, foresees the self - archiving and exchange of research publications, and the creation of new scientific journals which are free - of - charge -- so that knowledge becomes really accessible throughout the world, and so that it really does serve the development of collective well - being.
Together with the actions of citizens, in organizing other uses for the Internet, there also are new problems, posed by public power at all levels, from the local to the national and to international proposals.
When only 10% of a population has access to a public good, others may feel that they themselves might pass it up. But the question changes when it is a third of the population which uses the Internet, as is the case today in Europe, and when the media speak of it day after day. Offering access to everyone, and training to guarantee self - sufficiency to every Internaut, becomes a highly - sensitive question of "digital" planning.
Should access to the Internet be thought of as an investment in infrastructure, for the public good? Any region -- any city -- which is well - irrigated with communications networks, can attract corporations, research centers... Decentralization planning can discover a new resource, if high - capacity networks and networks of capable human beings can be brought together.
All of these choices may be discussed with the citizens, for an equal distribution of infrastructure between the needs of economics and those of citizenship. Too often, however, the "Silicon Valleys" content themselves with promoting their networks for corporations alone. The citizen's role is either ignored, or reduced to a publicity stunt for use by the municipality.
This is why initiatives which go further ought to be encouraged, as at Brest here in France:
But beyond the promotion of the Internet, questions concerning the long term development of the networks also need to be considered:
More generally, insofar as the networks induce a digitization of numerous cultural activities and trends, how can we define and protect the new global public goods which are associated with them:
Finally, basic education and continuing education must be re - thought, in light of their first forays into privatization and of the competition which the networks encourage. Yes, the Internet can supplement education, but we must resolve the questions of equality, of the access by all to education, of public support for an education which is both independant and of high quality.
The free play of competition, in a sector so fundamental as education, encourages more knowledge which is directly applicable, than it does the diffusion of knowledge which is transmissible. I myself teach in the domain of the technologies of the Internet: I know very well the pressures emanating from companies in the sector, who want training in this or that software package -- but my role as a university instructor is to enable my students to acquire a general understanding of the technologies, one which will allow them to adapt, when the moment arrives that they lack a particular something needed by company X. And I want them to be able to imagine pursuits -- or repeats -- of their studies, throughout their entire lives.
Education is the offer to individuals of the means for their autonomy, and of the capacity to place in perspective that which they have to do, as employee or as citizen. Of course, nearby, numerous other educational possibilities can find a place: private and profit - making, very much for the specific training of knowledge -- or private but non - profit, like the great associations for popular education, such as the Fe'de'ration Franc,aise des Maisons des Jeunes et de la Culture which is our host today.
But the defense of teaching which is secular, free, and obligatory, remains essential: just as essential as is the inclusion in such teaching of new technologies of communication -- image analysis, Internet use, the mastery of communications tools -- certainly when technological innovation and an explosion in new questions of citizenship make lifelong and continuing education so necessary.
It seems very interesting to me that a great deal of discussion is to be devoted to the question of copyright, during these meetings. Digitization, and the transmission of texts over the networks, are profoundly changing the methods of protecting copyright.
Copyright is a matter of balancing the needs of artists to earn their living by their art and the needs of all of society to obtain inventions and creations so as to enlarge the general knowledge possessed by humanity. In copyright, this translates into "public domain": the exception made for education or research, for the right of citation and of criticism, for the fair use of a private copy...
Currently, however, certain zealots of copyright see only one side of the balance. They have succeeded in conveying a message which is simple but wrong: one must pay, for each use made of a work. Now everyone worries for the author, who will be robbed by copying, by library borrowing, by the sharing of cassettes among friends... The belief is that we are aiding Flaubert, but we find ourselves enlisted in the service of Vivendi, or of Disney, or of Elsevier or Microsoft...
In the world of artifacts, copyright is negotiated at the moment of manufacture -- the publishing of a book, the pressing of a disk, the placing on sale of films or the distribution of broadcasts. With the Nets, one sees a shift toward a negotiation at the moment a work is used: a license for a defined number of sessions, restrictions on personal copying, licenses adapted to the material, refusals to loan digital texts...
These changes, moreover, are not being made to conventional copyright which is, I repeat, a matter of balancing -- and this since the first Statute of Anne, the ancestor of all copyright. The changes force us to reconsider collectively, weighing the interests of authors and those of society, and taking into account the interests in this patrimony of the producers and distributors who support that figure of the author.
The US Revolution -- their independence from England -- was made possible because the journals of cities in the 13 states were able to reprint the information which they derived from the journals of neighboring cities, and thus they circulated the news and organized the human networks which brought the Republic into being. Information is a social object, and not just a private good launched into a market of symbolic goods.
So we must reconsider copyright politically: as a function of the type of work involved, for a satellite photo is not a creative work like a stage play; or of the type of usage, as can one really forbid the study of contemporary art in schools?; and with regard to private usage of the work -- for copies made for one's - self and one's network of friends -- who after all will become future buyers, perhaps not of the copied work but of something else which they then will circulate among their own social group.
We need to avoid falling into the trap of pay - as - you - go, as that has been installed in the borrowing policies of libraries, and we need to avoid the hysterias of demagogues: no, you do not rob an author when you use a work which you have not purchased -- you circulate your culture, a thing which brings us to buy other works, in fact. You do not rob a music producer when you make a cassette for using in your car: the public success, realized by this very usage of these copies, is what earns him his living...
As a conclusion, to this already too lengthy presentation, I would like to emphasize the capacities of the Internet for renewing the democratic process. Modern democracies increasingly confront decisions which put grave consequences into play -- long term -- in situations of uncertainty, and moreover situations which are obscured by the "experts" in any given specialized area. Whether one thinks of genetic engineering, of nuclear energy and its wastes, or of global warming...
Citizens generally are kept from participating in such decisions. Political lobbies provide excuses for our politicians and do the real work -- including lying for them, as we have seen in the Enron affair, in the United States.
Citizens, however, have a need for expertise in these areas. They have a need for different information which can contradict, circulate, oppose, and defend, before the "tribunal of reason". We no longer can place our confidence in "science" to do this for us. The example of the participation of actual victims in the research networks on AIDS assembled by Act-Up demonstrates how citizens, when they do things together, can acquire knowledge and develop methods which place them on the same level as the experts, often self - proclaimed and authorized by their own expertise -- consider the propaganda of the multinational tobacco companies, or the revenge taken by asbestos victims on the arrogance of its producers.
The Internet is a formidable tool in the explosion of cooperative knowledge, of the networks and of counter - expertise, in this capacity providing everyone with an opportunity for increasing common knowledge. It is a tool for circulating information, and for influencing decisions.
More generally, when "economic capital" and "military power" are concentrated in very few hands, the multitudes possess as their tool of opposition their "social capital" -- the capacity to exchange information, and to mobilise for mutual advancement and social protection -- and their "symbolic capital" -- the cultural images which they can transmit to each other, with the assistance and active participation of artists. The Internet is an extraordinary means of constructing social capital.
As a tool for expression, the Internet permits each person to disseminate his ideas, his opinions. As a tool for duplication, it permits the circulation of these things, their distribution, eventually their enrichment through the commentary of others... New social networks thus are mobilized, to develop alternatives -- for example more equitable commercial practices, and more dependable financial structures -- and to develop counter - movements, such as the movements of opposition to international business meetings, as at Seattle.
Knowledge, and collective discussion, can be of the same level of quality as those which envelop the powerful. They can create a new perspective for the construction of a more just world, and the avoidance of dramatic consequences which accompany our current global situation and the inequalities which it engenders.
But the construction of social networks demands specifics -- in know - how, and in knowing - how - to - live. So -- New Abilities, for a New Democracy. The labor movement of the beginning of the last century learned to read and to write, so as to publish their tracts, for convincing their co - workers to organize. Activists of the 21st century have to learn the keyboard and the mouse, and the rhythms and social procedures appropriate to these new tools, which are simultaneously more relational -- one speaks as though one is among friends, when one wishes to contruct a consensus which will underlie grand movements -- and more intrusive -- email already being perceived as a tool which receives, and creates, behaviors very different from those resulting simply from reading journals.
Associations of popular education, in the middle of the last century, developed a form of popular thinking adapted to technological constraints -- if one thinks of "underground films" -- and to the political perspectives of the period -- chiefly organized within the nation - state, and focussing on the social struggle within the corporation.
How will these associations of popular education accommodate the change of the current era, and with that the change of technological tool -- to the network, or better to the "network of networks" -- all as an overture to the change of perspectives -- such as the global dimension of problems, now, the importance of the ecology crisis, the persistence of misery in the countries of The South, and the increasing inequalities?
I thank the Fédération française des Maisons des Jeunes et de la Culture -- which is itself an association for popular education -- for having organized these meetings for the discussion of such issues, and for having permitted me to express myself, by way of introduction, in presenting these questions before you.
If some of the points which Le Crosnier makes here sound unfamiliar, to US Americans, let me just say that they are very familiar nowadays to nearly anyone outside of the US. I keep hearing same or similar, myself, from correspondents seemingly everywhere, elsewhere -- from Russia, from Japan, from Britain, from Germany where unemployment just has reached 10% again and as a result the new Schroeder government suddenly is under siege, from Canadian Americans, and from Mexican Americans, and from others all over "Latin" America...
For example: Le Crosnier's contrast of the "consumer" versus the "citizen" roles, in Internet development and usage --
"Too often... the 'Silicon Valleys' content themselves with promoting their networks for corporations alone. The citizen's role is either ignored, or reduced to a publicity stunt for use by the municipality."
-- or the several strange realities of "copyright" --
"Copyright is a matter of balancing the needs of artists... and the needs of all of society... Currently, however, certain zealots of copyright see only one side of the balance..."
"Now everyone worries for the author, who will be robbed by copying, by library borrowing, by the sharing of cassettes among friends... The belief is that we are aiding Flaubert, but we find ourselves enlisted in the service of Vivendi, or of Disney, or of Elsevier or Microsoft..."
"... no, you do not rob an author when you use a work which you have not purchased -- you circulate your culture, a thing which brings us to buy other works, in fact."
"The US Revolution -- their independence from England -- was made possible because the journals of cities in the 13 states were able to reprint the information which they derived from the journals of neighboring cities, and thus they circulated the news and organized the human networks which brought the Republic into being. Information is a social object..."
-- or some of the newer, and grimmer, realities of new approaches to education, and to "digital library" service --
"The free play of competition, in a sector so fundamental as education, encourages more knowledge which is directly applicable, than it does the diffusion of knowledge which is transmissible..."
"A library pays for a 'subscription licence' to a journal... if anything goes wrong, pfffffffft, the journal disappears from your screen... And don't even ask about making an inhouse copy of the articles which interest you -- it is so simple to return to the source, each time, that it no longer is possible to copy the articles..."
The more extreme arguments on all of this which I myself hear nowadays are made by activists in India, environment ministers in East Africa, disillusioned former entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia and in Argentina -- one of the more responsible activists, quoted here by Le Crosnier, in fact operates from Penang, in Malaysia.
So it may not be France, but the US, which is isolated and alone, in much of this -- and so these are points which many in the US now really do need to hear... It is not so much a matter of agreeing, as it is of ceasing the denial which assumes that the entire world agrees with the US now.
Coming from the French, in this instance, this is the advice of friends: and as such -- and whether it is wrong or right -- at least it should be listened to, I believe. A few in the US, so far, have heard these cries -- but not many.
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