Message-ID: <19981211000426.AAD4139@LOCALNAME> Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 20:02:15 -0400 From: Kerry Miller <mailto:kerryo@NS.SYMPATICO.CA> Subject: IN FOCUS - The Net Effect!!! (fwd To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date sent: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 22:06:00 -0600 (CST) From: mailto:ferry@mscd.edu Subject: IN FOCUS - The Net Effect!!!
http://www.sciam.com/1999/0199issue/0199infocus.html
Scientific American: Science and the Citizen
IN FOCUS THE NET EFFECT
The Internet can be a powerful tool for political dissidents and "hacktivists." But the medium has yet to reach the grassroots level
The Internet has dramatically altered the way many people perform numerous tasks--communicating with one another, shopping, banking, making travel arrangements, keeping abreast of the news. Now add to the list political and human-rights reform. Proponents in those fields assert that the Internet and the World Wide Web have become essential tools for effecting change. But critics contend that the medium is often least available where it is most needed.
The ongoing struggle for democracy in Indonesia underscores the power of the Internet. Last spring protesters bypassed the state-controlled media there by posting a Web site containing a database that kept track of the corruption of then president Suharto. People across the country were continually adding information about the accumulated wealth of the president and his children, knowledge of which fueled an already inflammatory situation. Students also relied on the Internet to coordinate their demonstrations, which eventually led to Suharto's resignation.
Indeed, political dissenters and human-rights organizations around the world have taken advantage of the Internet's ability to disseminate information quickly, cheaply and efficiently. The Zapatista rebels have exploited it to garner support among international journalists and sympathizers against the Mexican government. The Free Burma Coalition uses its Web site to encourage consumers to boycott companies doing business in Myanmar. And the Digital Freedom Network routinely posts on the Web the writings of political dissidents, such as Raśl Rivero of Cuba, who are censored in their homelands. "To build up on-line communities with such limited resources is amazing," notes Xiao Qiang of Human Rights in China, a group based in New York City, which uses the Internet to organize letter-writing campaigns. Adds William F. Schulz, New York executive director of Amnesty International USA, "the Web is a critical new tool that we now have. It has radically increased our ability to funnel information."
For their part, governments face a quandary: How do they cobble together restrictive policies that will help them maintain the status quo without stifling the Web's many business benefits? Because of Indonesia's solid economic growth before the recent downturn, the country had a hands-off policy toward the Internet, which many companies had used to communicate with suppliers and customers across the sprawling archipelagic nation. But the same medium that enabled firms there to monitor the status of their factories and inventories also allowed dissidents to mobilize.
[...]
Yet while some people have proclaimed the dawning of a new age in electronic activism, others caution that the Internet's effect may be grossly exaggerated. Of a total worldwide population of about six billion people, only a tiny fraction is wired, and most of that is in North America, Europe and Japan, geographic areas not particularly known for political tyranny or egregious human-rights violations. For this reason, critics say the view of the Internet as a juggernaut for implementing sweeping reforms is an overblown, North- centric perspective. "How many people in the world have never even made a phone call? Maybe a third to a half. And how much impact do you think the Web's having on them?" asks Patrick Ball, senior program associate for the Science and Human Rights Program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The North-South dichotomy could worsen as the experiences of countries such as Indonesia and China make other nations wary of going on-line. In Saudi Arabia, for example, Internet service providers must apply for a license through the government, which requires that Web traffic be filtered through state- controlled proxy servers. And a host of governments have stepped up their efforts to make certain activities illegal, if for no other reason than to instill a chilling effect among the general populace. Last spring a Shanghai software engineer was arrested for allegedly sending a list of the e-mail addresses of thousands of Chinese to a U.S.-based dissident publication. Such acts notwithstanding, countries have also been loath to pull the plug on the Internet, fearing that the medium will be essential for their future economic success.
But the greatest value of the Internet certainly goes far beyond the actual numbers of people on-line, asserts Jagdish Parikh of Human Rights Watch in New York City. "How many people in China have Internet access? Not many," he notes. "But then why is the government there rushing to make laws restricting access? It's because the Internet makes people realize that they should have the legal, codified right to information."
-Alden M. Hayashi
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The wired/unwired ratio is continuously changing, of course, but it will change least in the regions which are least wired already. How might a wired community (such as this?) optimize the 'net effect' in even as fundamental a human right as literacy?
kerry "Send one kbyte; Levy one cent tax."