hosts community is a story in itself. The success of the WELL in its first five years, all would agree, rested heavily on the efforts of the conference hosts - online characters who had created the character of the first neighborhoods and kept the juice flowing between one another all over the WELL, but most pointedly in the Hosts conference. Some spicy reading in the Archives conference originated from old hosts' disputes - and substantial arguments about the implications of CMC for civil rights, intellectual property, censorship, by a lot of people who know what they are talking about, mixed liberally with a lot of other people who don't know what they are talking about, but love to talk anyway, via keyboard and screen, for years on end. In this virtual place, the pillars of the community and the worst offenders of public sensibilities are in the same group - the hosts. At their best and their worst, this ten percent of the online population put out the words that the other ninety percent keep paying to read. Like good hosts at any social gathering, they make newcomers welcome, keep the conversation flowing, mediate disputes, clean up messes, and throw out miscreants, if need be. A WELL host is part salon keeper, part saloon keeper, part talk-show host, part publisher. The only power to censor or to ban a user is the hosts' power. Policy varies from host to host, and that's the only policy. The only justice for those who misuse that power is the forced participation in weeks of debilitating and vituperative post-mortem. The hosts community is part long-running soap opera, part town meeting, bar-room brawl, anarchic debating society, creative groupmind, bloody arena, union hall, playpen, encounter group. The Hosts conference is extremely general, from technical questions to personal attacks. The Policy conference is supposed to be restricted to matters of what WELL policy is, or ought to be. The part-delusion, part-accurate perception that the hosts and other users have strong influence over WELL policy is part of what feeds debate here, and a strong element in the libertarian reputation of the stereotypical WELLite. After fighting my way through a day's or hour's worth of the Hot New Dispute in News, Hosts, and Policy, I check on the conferences I host - Info, Virtual Communities, Virtual Reality. After that my `.cflist' directs me, at the press of the return key, to the first new topic or response in the Parenting, Writers', Grateful Dead tours, Telecommunication, Macintosh, Weird, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Whole Earth, Books, Media, Men on the WELL, Miscellaneous, and Unclear conferences. The social dynamics of the WELL spawn new conferences in response to different kinds of pressures. Whenever a hot interpersonal or doctrinal issue breaks out, for example, people want to stage the brawl or make a dramatic farewell speech or shocking disclosure or serious accusation in the most heavily-visited area of the WELL, which is usually the place that others want to be a Commons - a place where people from different sub-communities can come to find out what is going on around the WELL, outside the WELL, where they can pose questions to the committee of the whole. When too many discussions of what the WELL's official policy ought to be, about censorship or intellectual property or the way people treat each other, break out, they tended to clutter the place people went to get a quick sense of what is happening outside their neighborhoods. So the Policy conference was born. But then the WELL grew larger and it wasn't just policy but governance and social issues like political correctness or the right of users to determine the social rules of the system. Several years and six thousand more users after the fission of the News and Policy conferences, another conference split off News - "MetaWELL," a conference was created strictly to discussions about the WELL itself, its nature, its situation (often dire), its future. Grabbing attention in the Commons is a powerful act. Some people seem drawn to performing there; others burst out there in acts of desperation, after one history of frustration or another. Dealing with people who are so consistently off-topic or apparently deeply grooved into incoherence, long-windedness, scatology, is one of the events that challenges a community to decide what its values really are, or ought to be. Something is happening here. I'm not sure anybody understands it yet. I know that the WELL and the net is an important part of my life and I have to decide for myself whether this is a new way to make genuine commitments to other human beings, or a silicon-induced illusion of community. I urge others to help pursue that question in a variety of ways, while we have the time. The political dimensions of CMC might lead to situations that would pre-empt questions of other social effects; responses to the need for understanding the power-relationships inherent in CMC are well represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others. We need to learn a lot more, very quickly, about what kind of place our minds are homesteading. The future of virtual communities is connected to the future of everything else, starting with the most precious thing people have to gain or lose - political freedom. The part played by communication technologies in the disintegration of communism, the way broadcast television pre-empted the American electoral process, the power of fax and CMC networks during times of political repression like Tienamen Square and the Soviet Coup attempt, the power of citizen electronic journalism, the power-maneuvering of law enforcement and intelligence agencies to restrict rights of citizen access and expression in cyberspace, all point to the future of CMC as a close correlate of future political scenarios. More important than civilizing cyberspace is ensuring its freedom as a citizen-to-citizen communication and publication medium; laws that infringe equity of access to and freedom of expression in cyberspace could transform today's populist empowerment into yet another instrument of manipulation. Will "electronic democracy" be an accurate description of political empowerment that grows out of the screen of a computer? Or will it become a brilliant piece of disinfotainment, another means of manipulating emotions and manufacturing public opinion in the service of power. Who controls what kinds of information is communicated in the international networks where virtual communities live? Who censors, and what is censored? Who safeguards the privacy of individuals in the face of technologies that make it possible to amass and retrieve detailed personal information about every member of a large population? The answers to these political questions might make moot any more abstract questions about cultures in cyberspace. Democracy itself depends on the relatively free flow of communications. The following words by James Madison are carved in marble at the United States Library of Congress: "A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." It is time for people to arm themselves with power about the future of CMC technology. Who controls the market for relationships? Will the world's increasingly interlinked, increasingly powerful, decreasingly costly communications infrastructure be controlled by a small number of very large companies? Will cyberspace be privatized and parceled out to those who can afford to buy into the auction? If political forces do not seize the high ground and end today's freewheeling exchange of ideas, it is still possible for a more benevolent form of economic control to stunt the evolution of virtual communities, if a small number of companies gain the power to put up toll-roads in the information networks, and smaller companies are not able to compete with them. Or will there be an open market, in which newcomers like Apple or Microsoft can become industry leaders? The playing field in the global telecommunications industry will never be level, but the degree of individual freedom available through telecommunication technologies in the future may depend upon whether the market for goods and services in cyberspace remains open for new companies to create new uses for CMC. I present these observations as a set of questions, not as answers. I believe that we need to try to understand the nature of CMC, cyberspace, and virtual communities in every important context - politically, economically, socially, culturally, cognitively. Each different perspective reveals something that the other perspectives do not reveal. Each different discipline fails to see something that another discipline sees very well. We need to think as teams here, across boundaries of academic discipline, industrial affiliation, nation, to understand, and thus perhaps regain control of, the way human communities are being transformed by communication technologies. We can't do this solely as dispassionate observers, although there is certainly a huge need for the detached assessment of social science. But community is a matter of the heart and the gut as well as the head. Some of the most important learning will always have to be done by jumping into one corner or another of cyberspace, living there, and getting up to your elbows in the problems that virtual communities face. FYI: ==== Howard Rheingold (1985) "Tools for Thought" New York, NY. Howard Reingold (1991) "Virtual Reality" New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Howard Rheingold (1993) "The Virtual Community: Homesteading On The Electronic Frontier" Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA. *"Everybody's got somewhere they call home."* -- Roger Waters *"All's WELL that ends WELL."* -- Shakespeare  * A Statement of Principle" by Bruce Sterling *  ******************************************** By *Bruce Sterling* (1) (Reprinted from SCIENCE FICTION EYE #10 with permission of the author.) I just wrote my first nonfiction book. It's called THE HACKER CRACKDOWN: LAW AND DISORDER ON THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER. Writing this book has required me to spend much of the past year and a half in the company of hackers, cops, and civil libertarians. I've spent much time listening to arguments over what's legal, what's illegal, what's right and wrong, what's decent and what's despicable, what's moral and immoral, in the world of computers and civil liberties. My various informants were knowledgeable people who cared passionately about these issues, and most of them seemed well- intentioned. Considered as a whole, however, their opinions were a baffling mess of contradictions. When I started this project, my ignorance of the issues involved was genuine and profound. I'd never knowingly met anyone from the computer underground. I'd never logged-on to an underground bulletin-board or read a semi-legal hacker magazine. Although I did care a great deal about the issue of freedom of expression, I knew sadly little about the history of civil rights in America or the legal doctrines that surround freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of association. My relations with the police were firmly based on the stratagem of avoiding personal contact with police to the greatest extent possible. I didn't go looking for this project. This project came looking for me. I became inextricably involved when agents of the United States Secret Service, acting under the guidance of federal attorneys from Chicago, came to my home town of Austin on March 1, 1990, and confiscated the computers of a local science fiction gaming publisher. STEVE JACKSON Games, Inc., of Austin, was about to publish a gaming- book called GURPS Cyberpunk. When the federal law-enforcement agents discovered the electronic manuscript of CYBERPUNK on the computers they had seized from Mr. Jackson's offices, they expressed grave shock and alarm. They declared that CYBERPUNK was "a manual for computer crime." It's not my intention to reprise the story of the Jackson case in this column. I've done that to the best of my ability in THE HACKER CRACKDOWN; and in any case the ramifications of March 1 are far from over. Mr. Jackson was never charged with any crime. His civil suit against the raiders is still in federal court as I write this. I don't want to repeat here what some cops believe, what some hackers believe, or what some civil libertarians believe. Instead, I want to discuss my own moral beliefs as a science fiction writer - such as they are. As an SF writer, I want to attempt a personal statement of principle. It has not escaped my attention that there are many people who believe that anyone called a "cyberpunk" must be, almost by definition, entirely devoid of principle. I offer as evidence an excerpt from BUCK BLOOMBECKER's 1990 book, SPECTACULAR COMPUTER CRIMES. On page 53, in a chapter titled "Who Are The Computer Criminals?", Mr. BloomBecker introduces the formal classification of "cyberpunk" criminality. "In the last few years, a new genre of science fiction has arisen under the evocative name of 'cyberpunk.' Introduced in the work of WILLIAM GIBSON, particularly in his prize-winning novel NEUROMANCER, cyberpunk takes an apocalyptic view of the technological future. In NEUROMANCER, the protagonist is a futuristic hacker who must use the most sophisticated computer strategies to commit crimes for people who offer him enough money to buy the biological creations he needs to survive. His life is one of cynical despair, fueled by the desire to avoid death. Though none of the virus cases actually seen so far have been so devastating, this book certainly represents an attitude that should be watched for when we find new cases of computer virus and try to understand the motivations behind them. "The New York Times's JOHN MARKOFF, one of the more perceptive and accomplished writers in the field, has written than a number of computer criminals demonstrate new levels of meanness. He characterizes them, as do I, as cyberpunks." Those of us who have read Gibson's NEUROMANCER closely will be aware of certain factual inaccuracies in Mr. BloomBecker's brief review. NEUROMANCER is not "apocalyptic." The chief conspirator in NEUROMANCER forces Case's loyalty, not by buying his services, but by planting poison-sacs in his brain. Case is "fueled" not by his greed for money or "biological creations," or even by the cynical "desire to avoid death," but rather by his burning desire to hack cyberspace. And so forth. However, I don't think this misreading of NEUROMANCER is based on carelessness or malice. The rest of Mr. BloomBecker's book generally is informative, well-organized, and thoughtful. Instead, I feel that Mr. BloomBecker manfully absorbed as much of NEUROMANCER as he could without suffering a mental toxic reaction. This report of his is what he actually *saw* when reading the novel. NEUROMANCER has won quite a following in the world of computer crime investigation. A prominent law enforcement official once told me that police unfailingly conclude the worst when they find a teenager with a computer and a copy of NEUROMANCER. When I declared that I too was a "cyberpunk" writer, she asked me if I would print the recipe for a pipe-bomb in my works. I was astonished by this question, which struck me as bizarre rhetorical excess at the time. That was before I had actually examined bulletin-boards in the computer underground, which I found to be chock-a-block with recipes for pipe-bombs, and worse. (I didn't have the heart to tell her that my friend and colleague WALTER JON WILLIAMS had once written and published an SF story closely describing explosives derived from simple household chemicals.) Cyberpunk SF (along with SF in general) has, in fact, permeated the computer underground. I have met young underground hackers who use the aliases "Neuromancer," "Wintermute" and "Count Zero." The Legion of Doom, the absolute bete noire of computer law-enforcement, used to congregate on a bulletin-board called "Black Ice." In the past, I didn't know much about anyone in the underground, but they certainly knew about me. Since that time, I've had people express sincere admiration for my novels, and then, in almost the same breath, brag to me about breaking into hospital computers to chortle over confidential medical reports about herpes victims. The single most stinging example of this syndrome is "PENGO," a member of the German hacker-group that broke into Internet computers while in the pay of the KGB. He told German police, and the judge at the trial of his co-conspirators, that he was inspired by NEUROMANCER and JOHN BRUNNER's SHOCKWAVE RIDER. I didn't write NEUROMANCER. I did, however, read it in manuscript and offered many purportedly helpful comments. I praised the book publicly and repeatedly and at length. I've done everything I can to get people to read this book. I don't recall cautioning Gibson that his novel might lead to anarchist hackers selling their expertise to the ferocious and repulsive apparat that gave the world the Lubyanka and the Gulag Archipelago. I don't think I could have issued any such caution, even if I'd felt the danger of such a possibility, which I didn't. I still don't know in what fashion Gibson might have changed his book to avoid inciting evildoers, while still retaining the integrity of his vision - the very quality about the book that makes it compelling and worthwhile. *This leads me to my first statements of moral principle.* As a "cyberpunk" SF writer, I am not responsible for every act committed by a Bohemian with a computer. I don't own the word "cyberpunk" and cannot help where it is bestowed, or who uses it, or to what ends. As a science fiction writer, it is not my business to make people behave. It is my business to make people imagine. I cannot control other people's imaginations - any more than I would allow them to control mine. I am, however, morally obliged to speak out when acts of evil are committed that use my ideas or my rhetoric, however distantly, as a justification. Pengo and his friends committed a grave crime that was worthy of condemnation and punishment. They were clever, but treacherously clever. They were imaginative, but it was imagination in a bad cause. They were technically accomplished, but they abused their expertise for illicit profit and to feed their egos. They may be "cyberpunks" - according to many, they may deserve that title far more than I do - but they're no friends of mine. What is "crime"? What is a moral offense? What actions are evil and dishonorable? I find these extraordinarily difficult questions. I have no special status that should allow me to speak with authority on such subjects. Quite the contrary. As a writer in a scorned popular literature and a self-professed eccentric Bohemian, I have next to no authority of any kind. I'm not a moralist, philosopher, or prophet. I've always considered my "moral role," such as it is, to be that of a court jester - a person sometimes allowed to speak the unspeakable, to explore ideas and issues in a format where they can be treated as games, thought-experiments, or metaphors, not as prescriptions, laws, or sermons. I have no religion, no sacred scripture to guide my actions and provide an infallible moral bedrock. I'm not seeking political responsibilities or the power of public office. I habitually question any pronouncement of authority, and entertain the liveliest skepticism about the processes of law and justice. I feel no urge to conform to the behavior of the majority of my fellow citizens. I'm a pain in the neck. My behavior is far from flawless. I lived and thrived in Austin, Texas in the 1970s and 1980s, in a festering milieu of arty crypto-intellectual hippies. I've committed countless "crimes," like millions of other people in my generation. These crimes were of the glamorous "victimless" variety, but they would surely have served to put me in prison had I done them, say, in front of the State Legislature. Had I lived a hundred years ago as I live today, I would probably have been lynched by outraged fellow Texans as a moral abomination. If I lived in Iran today and wrote and thought as I do, I would probably be tried and executed. As far as I can tell, moral relativism is a fact of life. I think it might be possible to outwardly conform to every jot and tittle of the taboos of one's society, while feeling no emotional or intellectual commitment to them. I understand that certain philosophers have argued that this is morally proper behavior for a good citizen. But I can't live that life. I feel, sincerely, that my society is engaged in many actions which are foolish and shortsighted and likely to lead to our destruction. I feel that our society must change, and change radically, in a process that will cause great damage to our present system of values. This doesn't excuse my own failings, which I regret, but it does explain, I hope, why my lifestyle and my actions are not likely to make authority feel entirely comfortable. Knowledge is power. The rise of computer networking, of the Information Society, is doing strange and disruptive things to the processes by which power and knowledge are currently distributed. Knowledge and information, supplied through these new conduits, are highly corrosive to the status quo. People living in the midst of technological revolution are living outside the law: not necessarily because they mean to break laws, but because the laws are vague, obsolete, overbroad, draconian, or unenforceable. Hackers break laws as a matter of course, and some have been punished unduly for relatively minor infractions not motivated by malice. Even computer police, seeking earnestly to apprehend and punish wrongdoers, have been accused of abuse of their offices, and of violation of the Constitution and the civil statutes. These police may indeed have committed these "crimes." Some officials have already suffered grave damage to their reputations and careers - all the time convinced that they were morally in the right; and, like the hackers they pursued, never feeling any genuine sense of shame, remorse, or guilt. I have lived, and still live, in a counterculture, with its own system of values. Counterculture - Bohemia - is never far from criminality. "To live outside the law you must be honest" was Bob Dylan's classic hippie motto. A Bohemian finds romance in the notion that "his clothes are dirty but his hands are clean." But there's danger in setting aside the strictures of the law to linchpin one's honor on one's personal integrity. If you throw away the rulebook to rely on your individual conscience you will be put in the way of temptation. And temptation is a burden. It hurts. It is grotesquely easy to justify, to rationalize, an action of which one should properly be ashamed. In investigating the milieu of computer-crime I have come into contact with a world of temptation formerly closed to me. Nowadays, it would take no great effort on my part to break into computers, to steal long-distance telephone service, to ingratiate myself with people who would merrily supply me with huge amounts of illicitly copied software. I could even build pipe-bombs. I haven't done these things, and disapprove of them; in fact, having come to know these practices better than I cared to, I feel sincere revulsion for them now. But this knowledge is a kind of power, and power is tempting. Journalistic objectivity, or the urge to play with ideas, cannot entirely protect you. Temptation clings to the mind like a series of small but nagging weights. Carrying these weights may make you stronger. Or they may drag you down. "His clothes are dirty but his hands are clean." It's a fine ideal, when you can live up to it. Like a lot of Bohemians, I've gazed with a fine disdain on certain people in power whose clothes were clean but their hands conspicuously dirty. But I've also met a few people eager to pat me on the back, whose clothes were dirty and their hands as well. They're not pleasant company. Somehow one must draw a line. I'm not very good at drawing lines. When other people have drawn me a line, I've generally been quite anxious to have a good long contemplative look at the other side. I don't feel much confidence in my ability to draw these lines. But I feel that I should. The world won't wait. It only took a few guys with pool cues and switchblades to turn Woodstock Nation into Altamont. Haight-Ashbury was once full of people who could trust anyone they'd smoked grass with and love anyone they'd dropped acid with - for about six months. Soon the place was aswarm with speed-freaks and junkies, and heaven help us if they didn't look just like the love-bead dudes from the League of Spiritual Discovery. Corruption exists, temptation exists. Some people fall. And the temptation is there for all of us, all the time. I've come to draw a line at money. It's not a good line, but it's something. There are certain activities that are unorthodox, dubious, illegal or quasi-legal, but they might perhaps be justified by an honest person with unconventional standards. But in my opinion, when you're making a commercial living from breaking the law, you're beyond the pale. I find it hard to accept your countercultural sincerity when you're grinning and pocketing the cash, compadre. I can understand a kid swiping phone service when he's broke, powerless, and dying to explore the new world of the networks. I don't approve of this, but I can understand it. I scorn to do this myself, and I never have; but I don't find it so heinous that it deserves pitiless repression. But if you're stealing phone service and selling it - if you've made yourself a miniature phone company and you're pimping off the energy of others just to line your own pockets - you're a thief. When the heat comes to put you away, don't come crying "brother" to me. If you're creating software and giving it away, you're a fine human being. If you're writing software and letting other people copy it and try it out as shareware, I appreciate your sense of trust, and if I like your work, I'll pay you. If you're copying other people's software and giving it away, you're damaging other people's interests, and should be ashamed, even if you're posing as a glamorous info-liberating subversive. But if you're copying other people's software and selling it, you're a crook and I despise you. Writing and spreading viruses is a vile, hurtful, and shameful activity that I unreservedly condemn. There's something wrong with the Information Society. There's something wrong with the idea that "information" is a commodity like a desk or a chair. There's something wrong with patenting software algorithms. There's something direly mean spirited and ungenerous about inventing a language and then renting it out to other people to speak. There's something unprecedented and sinister in this process of creeping commodification of data and knowledge. A computer is something too close to the human brain for me to rest entirely content with someone patenting or copyrighting the process of its thought. There's something sick and unworkable about an economic system which has already spewed forth such a vast black market. I don't think democracy will thrive in a milieu where vast empires of data are encrypted, restricted, proprietary, confidential, top secret, and sensitive. I fear for the stability of a society that builds sand castles out of databits and tries to stop a real-world tide with royal commands. Whole societies can fall. In Eastern Europe we have seen whole nations collapse in a slough of corruption. In pursuit of their unworkable economic doctrine, the Marxists doubled and redoubled their efforts at social control, while losing all sight of the values that make life worth living. At last the entire power structure was so discredited that the last remaining shred of moral integrity could only be found in Bohemia: in dissidents and dramatists and their illegal samizdat underground fanzines. Their clothes were dirty but their hands were clean. The only agitprop poster Vaclav Havel needed was a sign saying *Vaclav Havel Guarantees Free Elections.* He'd never held power, but people believed him, and they believed his Velvet Revolution friends. I wish there were people in the Computer Revolution who could inspire, and deserved to inspire, that level of trust. I wish there were people in the Electronic Frontier whose moral integrity unquestionably matched the unleashed power of those digital machines. A society is in dire straits when it puts its Bohemia in power. I tremble for my country when I contemplate this prospect. And yet it's possible. If dire straits come, it can even be the last best hope. The issues that enmeshed me in 1990 are not going to go away. I became involved as a writer and journalist, because I felt it was right. Having made that decision, I intend to stand by my commitment. I expect to stay involved in these issues, in this debate, for the rest of my life. These are timeless issues: civil rights, knowledge, power, freedom and privacy, the necessary steps that a civilized society must take to protect itself from criminals. There is no finality in politics; it creates itself anew, it must be dealt with every day. The future is a dark road and our speed is headlong. I didn't ask for power or responsibility. I'm a science fiction writer, I only wanted to play with Big Ideas in my cheerfully lunatic sandbox. What little benefit I myself can contribute to society would likely be best employed in writing better SF novels. I intend to write those better novels, if I can. But in the meantime I seem to have accumulated a few odd shreds of influence. It's a very minor kind of power, and doubtless more than I deserve; but power without responsibility is a monstrous thing. In writing HACKER CRACKDOWN, I tried to describe the truth as other people saw it. I see it too, with my own eyes, but I can't yet pretend to understand what I'm seeing. The best I can do, it seems to me, is to try to approach the situation as an open-minded person of goodwill. I therefore offer the following final set of principles, which I hope will guide me in the days to come. * I'll listen to anybody, and I'll try to imagine myself in their situation. * I'll assume goodwill on the part of others until they fully earn my distrust. * I won't cherish grudges. I'll forgive those who change their minds and actions, just as I reserve the right to change my own mind and actions. * I'll look hard for the disadvantages to others, in the things that give me advantage. I won't assume that the way I live today is the natural order of the universe, just because I happen to be benefiting from it at the moment. And while I don't plan to give up making money from my ethically dubious cyberpunk activities, I hope to temper my impropriety by giving more work away for no money at all. ---------- Footnotes ---------- (1) Copyright (C) 1992 by Bruce Sterling. All rights reserved. FYI: ==== Bruce Sterling (1992) "Free as Air, Free as Water, Free as Knowledge" Speech to the Library Information Technology Association, June 1992. San Francisco, CA. Bruce Sterling (1992) "The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder at the Electronic Frontier", Viking, London, England. Bruce Sterling & William Gibson (1993) "Literary Freeware -- Not for Commercial Use" Speeches to National Academy of Sciences Convocation on Technology and Education, May 10, 1993, Washington, D.C.: Computer Underground Digest #5.54. Bruce Sterling (1992-1993) "Agitprop disk: Literary Freeware -- Not for Commercial Use" Contains various SF magazine columns, texts of speeches, etc. Available via anonymous FTP from `ftp.eff.org' in directory `/pub/agitprop'. Or use Gopher at `gopher.well.sf.ca.us', and see under `Bruce Sterling/'. *"...and the silicon chip inside her head, has turned to overload."* -- Bob Geldof, "I don't like Mondays"  * "Subject: A Perspective on NREN" by Greg Chartrand *  ************************************************** By *Greg Chartrand* (1) National Science Foundation Develops a National Super Highway GREG CHARTRAND 3/11/93 "I just returned from a network meeting in San Diego today and though you would be interested in my interpretation of what NSF proposes for the National Education and Research Network (NREN). Rather than comment specifically, I decided it would be interesting to write a *parody* which relates the NREN to the construction of a national super highway. Doing so removes the highly technical aspects of the overall planned functions the NREN. Please excuse this style, but I think its the only way to explain my understanding of their plan in a way that does not immediately get very technical. It may be flawed, but the information is based upon Hans-Werner Braun's presentation.... as I understood it." The National Science foundation is in the process of developing plans to build a national super highway that will advance transportation technology in our country. The super highway proposed will replace the existing interstate highway system and allow speeds of at least 240 MPH. the following interview with NSF developers explores their current plans. * ME: I understand you are building a new Super national highway(2) to serve the purposes of advancing ground transportation throughout our county. NSF: Yes we are, as a part of an earlier initiative sponsored by the then Senator Gore. We are very excited about the technology that will allow transportation speeds of 240 MPH(3) across the country. ME: That sounds exciting, how will it be built? NSF: Well, we will have this super highway designed to allow the high speed travel(4) and it will have six entrance/exit ramps.(5) ME: Ahh.... that doesn't sound like very many ramps, where will they be located? NSF: Well, several years ago we funded the establishment of six gourmet restaurants(6) scattered across the country, we are going to fund the building of the super highway and access ramps at the restaurant locations. We are however allowing the ramp contractor(7) to build as many ramps as he wishes, at his own expense. ME: I assume then the contractor for the highway(8) builds ramps where ever it makes sense to optimize access. NSF: Well, not exactly. We are separating the contracts for the ramps and the highway so the bidders can be very competitive. ME: I see. How to you plan to connect the rest of the interstate highway system(9) to your super national highway? NSF: Well actually, its not part of our plan. We are having the highway and access ramps built for us, its up to the states or other government agencies to provide the highways to the access ramps. We will however fund a few temporary roads(10) to connect parts of the existing interstate highway system, but don't intend to make them permanent. Did I forget to mention that we will be shutting down the existing interstate highway system?(11) ME: You mean I will no longer be able to drive across the existing interstate highway system? NSF: Yes, it will be destroyed. ME: OK, lets see If I understand. I have a state highway system for example, and I put in a connecting highway to your super highway, and I can now travel on it, right? NSF: Well, no you can't. The super highway will only be used for vehicles that can run 240 MPH(12) and we must approve every vehicle, destination, and trip the vehicle takes.(13) We don't want our super highway clogged with vehicles which can only travel 70 MPH!(14) ME: I'm confused. You mean you want my state for example, to build an access road to a super highway it can't generally use? NSF: Well, yes and no. You see we also want to encourage development of toll roads in our country.(15) Our six high speed access ramps are wide enough to allow parallel toll roads to be accessed as well as our super highway. Private road builders will be able to put in toll roads between our access ramps, for a fee. ME: So there will no longer be a "free" interstate highway system? NSF: Right! ME: Lets see if I got this straight. You build a national super highway that has six access ramps located where you once established gourmet restaurants and you destroy the interstate highway system. There are no plans to replicate the functionality of the interstate highway systems, but you will allow private toll road builders to use your wide access ramps and develop parallel toll roads to your super highway. My state or the government has to build the roads that lead to the super highway, but once there, cannot travel on it unless the specific vehicle can run at 240 MPH and has specific permission from you to travel on it. NSF: You've got it! ME: Well then you must have a very interesting reason to put this highway and the access ramps at these restaurant locations. NSF: Well, you see, the gourmet food business isn't what it used to be. Fast food has really taken over in our country, we really need to preserve the gourmet food business.(16) High quality restaurants should be located right off of classy high speed highways. We really would like to encourage restaurant patrons to use the super highway so they can have breakfast in San Diego and dinner in Champaign Illinois. We will be looking for patrons who can afford to eat at multiple restaurants and we will let them ride the highway for free! Of course they must have a vehicle that can go 240 MPH.(17) ME: I'm even more confused. How will I get across the country? NSF: Well, if your state puts in an access road to one of our access ramps you take it, and then exit-off on to one of the toll roads that will be built parallel to our super highway. ME: How fast will I be able to go?(18) NSF: What ever the speed limit is on the toll road. ME: What will it cost me to ride on it? NSF: What ever the toll is. You see, we expect that several toll roads will be developed. Competition! It should keep the price down. ME: When the super highway is empty, how will it be used? NSF: Well, we are telling the gourmet restaurants that they should work together even though they will be competing with each other for customers.(19) You know, they could develop plans to send trash to each other so they can demonstrate how fast the transportation is on the super highway, it would be in their best interest.(20) ME: Aren't there plans for development of high speed toll roads already in progress by several toll road builders? What makes you think they will put their roads in-between your access ramps?(21) NSF: F.O.D. ME: What? NSF: Field Of Dreams. If we build it they will come. ME: So again, tell me who pays for what? NSF: The government funds the super highway and six access ramps. The toll road providers build their own roads and pays an access fee for the ramps. The states and other government agencies pay for any roads necessary to get to the access ramps. When you get on a toll road and pay what ever the price is. ME: And the only one's allowed to ride on the super highway are those persons who have special vehicles that can go 240 MPH with your specific permission, or those who can afford to frequent the gourmet restaurants and travel at 240 MPH. Everyone else takes the toll roads. NSF: Right, but don't forget the trash runs between restaurants! ME: Oh, how silly of me! Hmmmm. I wonder if this is really what Senator Gore had in mind? *"If we do not succeed, then we face the risk of failure."* -- Vice President Dan Quayle *"What a terrible thing to have