Letter in today's Seattle Times

[Doug Schuler]

Here is a letter to the editor that I wrote that was printed
in today's Seattle Times.

-- Doug


Editor,

I want to thank Paul Andrews and Peter Lewis for their reports on 
the latest technological wizardry from COMDEX.  Nobody can say that 
the computer industry hasn't kept busy!  

Yet under the veneer of excitement are growing doubts.  One of these 
doubts, as Lewis reported, is that the Internet, despite its admittedly 
democratic potential, is likely to become more and more like 
television.  Indeed the Internet without conscious and sustained 
public discussion, policy work, and institution creation, is likely to 
become an even vaster wasteland than TV, making today's broadcast 
television look like an exemplar of public good.  

Worse, as many fear, the "computer revolution" instead of helping 
people by providing new opportunities, is actually expanding the 
already deep divide between rich and poor.  

There is an increasing disillusionment with the technological pundits, 
or "digerati", who claim that next season's computer and 
communications technology will bring prosperity and democracy for 
all.  Instead, my admiration -- and hope -- goes out to those people 
that University of California professor Philip Agre calls "public 
hackers", who realize that fancy technology does not a society make 
and are willing to say so.  These are the people who are trying to 
figure out how we as a society can shape the new technology into 
tools and institutions that actually have lasting value.  

Although we are fortunate that a great many of these "public 
hackers" are working in Seattle, I fear that their voices may be lost in 
the overall din of unchecked technological celebration, as evidenced 
by the COMDEX Las Vegas extravaganza.


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